Seismic analysis of the world's tallest building

Taipei 101 (officially known as the Taipei Financial Center) with 101 stories and 508 m height, located in Taipei where earthquakes and strong typhoons are common occurrences, is currently the tallest building in the world. The great height of the building, the special geographic and environmental conditions, not surprisingly, presented one of the greatest challenges for structural engineers. In particular, its dynamic performance under earthquake or wind actions requires intensive research. The structure of the building is a mega-frame system composed of concrete filled steel tube (CFT) columns, steel brace core and belt trusses which are combined to resist vertical and lateral loads. In this study, a shaking table test was conducted to determine the constitutive relationships and finite element types for the CFT columns and steel members for establishing the finite element (FE) model of the tall building. Then, the seismic responses of the super-tall building were numerically investigated. An earthquake spectrum generated for Taipei Basin was adopted to calculate the lateral displacements and distributions of interior column forces. Furthermore, time-history analyses of elastic and inelastic seismic response were carried out using scaled accelerograms representing earthquake events with return periods of 50-year, 100-year, and 950-year, respectively. The computational results indicate that the super-tall building with the mega-frame system possesses substantial reserve strength, and the high-rise structure would satisfy the design requirements under severe seismic events. The output of this study is expected to be of considerable interest and practical use to professionals and researchers involved in the design of super-tall buildings. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.