High-Rise Construction

Construction Systems for High-Rise

Structures
Introduction

The determination of the structural form of a high-

rise building would involve the selection and
arrangement of the major structural elements to
resist most efficiently the various combinations
of gravity and horizontal loading.
The principal objectives in choosing a building’s
structural form are to arrange to support the
gravity, dead and live loading, and to resist at all
levels the external horizontal load shear, moment,
and torque with adequate strength and stiffness.
Non-structural considerations
The range of factors other than structural
considerations that influence the choice of structural
form are
Internal planning
Material
Method of construction
External architectural treatment
Planned location
Routing of the service systems
Height & proportions of the building
Weight of steel in tall buildings
Height & Structural loading

In HRBs designed for a similar purpose and of the same

material and height, the efficiency of the structures can be
compared roughly by their weight per unit floor area.
 The weight of the floor framing is influenced by the floor
span and is independent of the building height, while the
weight of the columns is approximately proportional to
the height.
Buildings of up to 10 storeys can accommodate wind
loading without increase in member sizes, because of the
typically allowed increase in permissible stresses in
Design Codes for the combined loading.
Height & Structural loading

For buildings of more than 10 storeys, the

additional material required for wind
resistance increases nonlinearly with
height.
For buildings of 50 storeys and more the
selection of an appropriate structural form
may be critical for the economy and indeed
the viability of the building.
 Function of the building

A major consideration affecting structural form

is the function of the building.
Modern office buildings call for large floor
spaces that can be subdivided with lightweight
partitioning to suit the individual tenant’s needs
– the structure’s main vertical components are
generally arranged as far as possible around the
perimeter of the plan and internally in groups
around the elevator, stair and service shafts.
Function of the building
The floors span the areas b/w the exterior and
interior components, leaving large column
free areas available for office planning.
The services are distributed horizontally in
each storey above the partitioning and are
concealed in a ceiling space. The extra depth
required by this space causes the typical
storey height in an office building to be
3.5m or more.
Plan of office block(tube-type)
Function of the building

In a residential building or hotel, accommodation is

subdivided permanently and usually repetitively from
floor to floor.
Therefore, continuously vertical columns and walls
can be distributed over the plan to form, or fit
within, the partitioning.
The services can then be run vertically, adjacent to the
walls and columns or in separate shafts, to emerge in
each storey either very close to where required, or to be
distributed horizontally from there to where required,
along the corridor ceiling spaces.
Plan of residential block
Function of the building
With the exception of the corridors, therefore, a ceiling
space is not required, and the soffit of the slab can
serve as the ceiling.
This allows the storey heights in a typical residential
building or hotel to be kept down to approximately
2.7 m.
A 40-storey residential building is, therefore, generally
of significantly less height than a 40-storey office
building.
Positioning of vertical members
With regard to horizontal loading, a HRB is essentially a
vertical cantilever.
This may comprise one or more individually acting
vertical cantilevers, such as shear walls or cores, each
bending about its own axis and acting in unison only
through the horizontal in-plane rigidity of the floor
slabs.
Within the constraints of selected structural form,
advantage may be taken of locating the main vertical
members on plan so that the dead load compressive
stresses suppress the lateral load tensile stresses, thereby
avoiding the possibility of net tension occurring in the
vertical members and uplift on the foundations.
Steel framing
Appropriate for all heights of structure and,
because of its high strength-to-weight ratio, it
has always been the material of construction for
the tallest buildings.
Allows the possibility of longer spans, and of
partial prefabrication, leading to reduced site work
and more rapid erection.
Disadvantages: needs fire & rust protection,
expensive to clad and requires costly diagonal
bracing or rigid-frame connections.
RCC tall buildings

Introduced two decades after the first steel tall

buildings.
Earlier structures were influenced in form by the
skeletal, column and girder arrangements of their steel
counterparts.
They differed in depending on the inherent rigid frame
action of concrete construction to resist horizontal
loading.
The subsequently introduced flat plate & flat slab forms
and moment resistant frame, continued till late 1940s.
Shear walls
A major step forward in RC high-rise structural form
to resist horizontal loading.
Freed the concrete HRBs, the 20 to 25 storey
limitations of the rigid frame and flat plate systems.
The innovation and refinement of these forms with the
development of HPC has allowed the height of
concrete buildings to reach within striking distance of
100 storeys.
Construction Systems for HR Structures
 Braced-Frame structures
 Rigid-Frame structures
 Infilled-Frame structures
 Flat-Plate and Flat-Slab structures
 Shear Wall structures
 Wall-Frame structures
 Framed-Tube structures
 Outrigger-Braced structures
 Suspended structures
 Core structures
 Space structures
 Hybrid structures
Braced-Frame Structures
The lateral resistance of the structure is provided by
diagonal members.
Horizontal shear is resisted by the horizontal
components of the axial tensile or compressive actions in
the web members.
Generally regarded as an exclusively steel system
because the diagonals are inevitably subjected to tension.
Sometimes concrete bracing of the double diagonal form
are used where each diagonal designed as a compression
member to carry the external shear.
Braced Frame
Braced Frame
Braced-Frame Structures
Advantages: Able to produce a laterally very
stiff structure for a minimum of additional
material makes it an economical structural
form for any height of building.
Disadvantages:
It obstructs the internal planning and the
location of windows and doors.
Diagonal connections are expensive to
fabricate and erect.
Rigid-Frame Structures
Consist of columns and girders joined by moment-
resistant connections.
The lateral stiffness of a rigid-frame bent depends on
the bending stiffness of the columns, girders, and
connections in the plane of the bent.
Advantage: Its open rectangular arrangement allows
freedom of planning and easy fitting of doors and
windows.
Disadvantage: In its typical 6 x 9 m bay size, rigid
framing is economic only for buildings up to about
25 storeys. Above 25 storeys the relatively high lateral
flexibility of the frame calls for uneconomically large
members in order to control the drift.
Rigid-Frame
Rigid-Frame Structures

Ideally suited for RC buildings because of the

inherent rigidity of RC joints.
Also used for steel frame buildings, but MR
connections in steel tend to be costly.
Gravity loading also is resisted by the rigid-frame
action.
Negative moments are introduced in the girders
adjacent to the columns causing the mid-span
positive moments to be significantly less than in a
simply supported span.
Rigid-Frame Structures
Infilled-Frame Structures
Most usual form of construction for tall buildings of up
to 30 storeys in height in many countries.
Column and girder framing of RC, or sometimes steel, is
filled by panels of brickwork, block-work, or cast-in-
place concrete.
When an infilled frame is subjected to lateral loading,
the infill behaves effectively as a strut along its
compression diagonal to brace the frame.
Because the infills serve also as external walls or
internal partitions, the system is an economical way of
stiffening and strengthening the structure.
Infilled-Frame Structures
Infilled-Frame Structures
The complex interactive behaviour of the infill in
the frame, and the rather random quality of
masonry, has made it difficult to predict with accuracy
the stiffness and strength of an infilled frame.
No method of analyzing infilled frames for design
has gained general acceptance.
Because of the fear of the unwitting removal of
bracing infills at some time in the life of the building,
the use of the infills for bracing tall buildings has
mainly been supplementary to the rigid-frame action
of concrete frames.
Flat-Plate and Flat-Slab Structure
The simplest of all structural forms that consists of
uniform slabs of 12-20 cm thickness, connected rigidly
to supporting columns.
The system, which is essentially of RC, is very
economical in having a flat soffit requiring the most un-
complicated formwork and, because the soffit can be
used as the ceiling, in creating a minimum possible floor
depth.
Under lateral loading the behaviour of a flat-plate
structure is similar to that of rigid frame, that is, its lateral
resistance depends on the flexural stiffness of the
components and their connections with the slabs
corresponding to the girders of the rigid frame.
Two-way flat-plate
Two-way flat-slab
Flat-Plate and Flat-Slab Structure
Appropriate for apartment and hotel construction
where ceiling spaces are not required and where the
slab may serve directly as the ceiling.
The flat-plate structure is economical for spans of up
to about 8 m, above which drop panels can be added to
create a flat-slab structure for spans of up to 12 m.
Buildings that depend entirely for their lateral
resistance on flat-plate or flat-slab action are
economical up to 25 storeys.
When Code requirements for wind design were less
stringent, many flat-plate buildings were constructed in
excess of 40 stories, and are still performing
satisfactorily.
Shear Wall Structures
Concrete or masonry continuous vertical walls may
serve both architecturally as partitions and
structurally to carry gravity and lateral loading.
Very high in-plane stiffness and strength makes them
ideally suited for bracing tall buildings.
Shear walls are entirely responsible for the lateral load
resistance of the building.
Act as vertical cantilevers in the form of separate planar
walls, and as non-planar assemblies of connected walls
around elevator, stair, and service shafts.
Much stiffer horizontally than rigid frames, shear wall
structures can be economical up to 35 storeys.
Shear Wall Structure
WYNN LAS VEGAS - Concrete shear wall structure with post-
tensioned floor system, 50-story tower with 2,700 hotel rooms - the tallest hotel
tower (543’ tall) on the Las Vegas Strip
Shear Wall Structures
In contrast to rigid frames, the shear walls’ solid form
tends to restrict planning where open internal spaces
are required.
Well suited to hotels and residential buildings where
the floor-by-floor repetitive planning allows the
walls to be vertically continuous and where they
serve simultaneously as excellent acoustic and fire
insulators b/w rooms and apartments.
In low-to-medium-rise buildings, if shear walls are
combined with frames, it is reasonable to assume that
the shear walls attract all the lateral loading so that the
frame may be designed for only gravity loading.
Shear Wall Structures
It is especially important in shear wall structures to
try to plan the wall layout so that the lateral load
tensile stresses are suppressed by the gravity
load stresses. This allows them to be designed to
have only the minimum reinforcement.
Shear walls structures have been shown to
perform well in earthquakes for which case
ductility becomes an important consideration in
their design.
Coupled Wall Structures
Two or more shear walls in the same plane, or
almost the same plane, connected at the floor levels by
beams or stiff slabs.
The effect of the shear-resistant connecting members is
to cause the set of walls to behave in their plane partly
as a composite cantilever bending about the common
centroidal axis of the walls.
Results in a horizontal stiffness very much greater than
if the walls acted as a set of separate uncoupled
cantilevers.
Coupled Wall Structure
Coupled Wall Structures
Coupled walls occur in residential construction
where lateral-load resistant cross walls, which
separate the apartments consist of in-plane coupled
pairs, or trios, of shear walls b/w which there are
corridor or window openings.
Although shear walls are obviously more appropriate
for concrete construction, they have occasionally been
constructed of heavy steel plate in the style of
massive vertical plate or box girders as parts of steel
frame structures.
They have been designed for locations of extremely
heavy shear such as at the base of elevator shafts.
Wall-Frame Structures
When shear walls are combined with rigid frames the
walls, which tend to deflect in a flexural configuration,
and the frames, which tend to deflect in a shear mode,
are constrained to adopt a common deflected shape by
the horizontal rigidity of the girders and slabs.
As a consequence, the walls and frames interact
horizontally, especially at the top to produce a stiffer
and stronger structure.
The interacting wall-frame combination is
appropriate for buildings in the 40 to 60 storey range,
well beyond that of rigid frames or shear walls alone.
Wall-Frame Structure
Wall-Frame Structures

An additional feature of the wall-frame structure is that in a

carefully “tuned” structure, the shear in the frame can be
made approximately uniform over the height, allowing
the floor framing to be repetitive.
Although the wall-frame structure is usually perceived as
a concrete structural form, with shear walls and concrete
frames, a steel counterpart using braced frames and steel
rigid frames offers similar benefits of horizontal
interaction.
The braced frames behave with an overall flexural tendency
to interact with the shear mode of the rigid frames.
Framed-Tube Structures
The lateral resistance of framed-tube structures is provided
by very stiff MR frames that form a “tube” around the
perimeter of the building.
The frames consist of closely spaced columns, 2 – 4m b/w
centres, joined by deep spandrel girders.
Although the tube carries all the lateral loading, the gravity
loading is shared b/w the tube and interior columns or walls.
When lateral loading acts, the perimeter frames aligned in
the direction of loading act as the “webs” of the massive
tube cantilever, and those normal to the direction of the
loading act as the “flanges”.
Framed-Tube Structures
The tube is suitable for both steel and RC construction
and has been used for buildings ranging from 40 to
more than 100 storeys.
The highly repetitive pattern of the frames lends
itself to prefabrication in steel and to the use of
rapidly moving gang forms in concrete, which make
for rapid construction.
Most significant modern developments in HR
structural form which offers efficient and easily
constructed structure for greatest of heights.
Framed-Tube
(a) Tube-in-Tube or Hull-core Structures
The variation of the framed tube consists of an
outer framed tube, the “hull” together with an
internal elevator and service core.
The hull and core act jointly in resisting both
gravity and lateral loading.
In a steel structure the core may consist of braced
frames, whereas in a concrete structure it would
consist of an assembly of shear walls.
Tube-in-Tube
(b) Bundled-Tube Structures

Used for the Sears Tower in Chicago – the

then world’s tallest building.
The Sears Tower consists of four parallel rigid
steel frames in each orthogonal direction,
interconnected to form nine “bundled” tubes.
In Sears Tower, advantage was taken of the
bundled form to discontinue some of the
tubes, and so reduce the plan of the building at
stages up the height.
Bundled-Tube
Sears Tower
(c) Braced-Tube Structures
Another way of improving the efficiency of the framed
tube, thereby increasing its potential for use to even
greater heights as well as allowing greater spacing b/w
columns, is to add diagonal bracing to the faces of the
tube.
First used in a steel structure in 1969, in Chicago’s
John Hancock Building and in RC structure in
1985, in New York’s 780 Third Avenue Building.
In the steel tube the bracing traverses the faces of the
rigid structures, whereas in the concrete structure the
bracing is formed by a diagonal pattern of concrete
window-size panels, poured integrally with the frame.
Steel-braced tube & Concrete-braced tube
Chicago’s John Hancock Building
New York’s 780 Third Avenue Building
Outrigger-Braced Structures
Consists of a central core, comprising either
braced frames or shear walls, with horizontal
cantilever “outrigger” trusses or girders
connecting the core to the outer columns.
When the structure is loaded horizontally, vertical
plane rotations of the core are restrained by the
outriggers through tension in the windward
columns and compression in the leeward
columns.
Outrigger-Braced Structures
The effective structural depth of the building is greatly
increased, thus augmenting the lateral stiffness of
the building and reducing the lateral deflections
and moments in the core.
In effect, the outriggers join the columns to the core to
make the structure behave as a partly composite
cantilever.
Used for buildings form 40 to 70 storeys high, but the
system should be effective and efficient for much
greater heights.
 Outrigger-braced structure &
Outrigger-braced structure under load
Suspended Structures

Consists of a central core, or cores, with horizontal

cantilevers at roof level, to which vertical hangers of
steel cable, rod, or plate are attached.
The floor slabs are suspended from the hangers.
Advantages: Primarily architectural in that, except for
the presence of the central core, the ground storey can
be entirely free of major vertical members, thereby
allowing an open concourse, also, the hangers, because
they are in tension and consequently can be of high
strength steel, have a minimum sized section and
therefore less obtrusive.
 Suspended structure &
sequence of construction
Two-tiered suspended structure
Core Structures
A single core to carry the entire gravity and
horizontal loading.
In some, the slabs are suspended at each level by
cantilevers from the core. In others, the slabs are
suspended b/w the core and perimeter columns, which
terminate either on major cantilevers at intervals down
the height, or on a single massive cantilever a few
storeys above the ground.
Advantages: mainly architectural, in providing a
column-free perimeter at the ground level and at
other levels just below the cantilevers.
Core Structure
Space Structures
The primarily load-resisting system of a space
structure consists essentially of a 3D triangulated
frame – as distinct from an assembly of planar bents –
whose members serve dually in resisting both gravity
and horizontally loading.
Highly efficient, relatively lightweight structure with a
potential for achieving the greatest heights.
The 76-storey Hong Kong bank of China Building
is a classic example.
Core Structures
Core Structures
76-storey Hong Kong bank of China Building
Suspended Structures
Hybrid Structures
New generation of “postmodern” buildings that are
emphatically non-regular in shape, with large scale cut-
outs, flutings, facets, and crowns that defy classification.
Combinations of two or more of the basic structural
forms have often been used in the same building, either
by direct combination as in a suspended tube and
outrigger system or by adopting different forms in
different parts of the structure as in a tube system on three
faces of the building and a space frame on a faceted
fourth face.
With the ready availability of powerful computers and
highly efficient structural analysis programs, an
engineer is able to analyze a structure to suit a building of
almost any conceivable irregularity.
Hybrid Structure
Hybrid Structure
Floor Systems
Floor Systems – Reinforced Concrete
One-way slabs on beams or walls
One-way pan joists and beams
One-way slab on beams and girders
Two-way flat plate
Two-way flat slab
Waffle flat slabs
Two-way slab and beam
Floor systems – Steel framing
One-way beam system
Two-way beam system
Three-way beam system
Composite steel-concrete floor systems
Burj Dubai Project

A Case Study
Burj Dubai- Artist’s Rendering
828 meters tall.
160 floors.
Total floor area 4,60,000
square meters
Multi-use: residential,
hotel, commercial,
office, entertainment,
shopping and leisure.
The Main Team
Client of Burj Dubai Tower - Emaar Properties, a
major developer of lifestyle real estate in the
Middle East.
Construction Manager - Turner International
General Contractor - Samsung Joint Venture
(consisting of Samsung, Korea base contractor;
Besix, Belgium base contractor; and Arabtec,
Dubai base contractor).
The Design
Derived from geometries of the desert flower, which
is indigenous to the region, and the patterning systems
embodied in Islamic architecture.
The tower massing is organized around a central
core with three wings. Each wing consists of four
bays. At every seventh floor, one outer bay peels
away as the structure spirals into the sky.
Unlike many super high-rise buildings with deep
floor plates, the Y-shape floor plans of Burj Dubai
maximize views and provide tenants with plenty of
natural light.
The tower superstructure
is designed as an all
reinforced concrete
building with high
performance concrete
from the foundation level
to level 156, and is topped
with a structural steel
braced frame from level
156 to the pinnacle.
Structural System
Lateral Load Resisting System

The tower’s lateral load resisting system consists of high

performance, reinforced concrete ductile core walls
linked to the exterior reinforced concrete columns through
a series of reinforced concrete shear wall panels.
The core walls vary in thickness from 1300mm to
500mm.
The core walls are typically linked through a series of
800mm to 1100mm deep reinforced concrete or composite
link beams at every level.
Due to the limitation on the link beam depth, ductile
composite link beams are provided in certain areas of
the core wall system.
These composite ductile link beams typically consist
of steel shear plates, or structural steel built-up I-
shaped beams, with shear studs embedded in the
concrete section. The link beam width typically
matches the adjacent core wall thickness.
At the top of the centre reinforced concrete core
wall, a very tall spire tops the building, making it the
tallest tower in the world for all categories.
The lateral load resisting system of the spire consists
of a diagonal structural steel bracing system at
level 156.
Floor Framing System
The residential and hotel floor framing system of the
Tower consists of 200mm to 300mm two-way
reinforced concrete flat plate slabs spanning
approximately 9 m between the exterior columns and
the interior core wall.
The floor framing system at the tips of the tower floor
consists of a 225mm to 250mm two-way reinforced
concrete flat plate system.
The floor framing system within the interior core
consists of a two way reinforced concrete flat plate
system with beams.
Comparison of various structural systems