• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.87-93
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• 2020

Professionals who work in the realm of tall building design and construction are well aware that high-rises are the best solution for accommodating growing urban populations. Until recently, few would have thought to include tall wood buildings as part of that solution, but there is growing awareness that tall mass timber structures can help satisfy the need for density while addressing the need-equally urgent-for a more sustainable built environment. This paper examines the trend toward tall wood buildings in the United States, including their history and international influences, market drivers, structural performance, and economic viability, as well as building code changes that allow wood structures up to 18 stories. It highlights examples of mass timber projects, with an emphasis on benefits that impact return on investment.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.83-94
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• 2019

Diagrid structures have emerged in recent decades as an innovative solution for tube tall buildings, capable of merging structural efficiency and aesthetic quality. This paper investigates the effect of the building slenderness (grossly quantified by means of the aspect ratio, i.e., the ratio between the height and the plan dimension) on the structural behavior and on the optimal design parameters of diagrid tall buildings. For this purpose, building models with different slenderness values are designed by adopting preliminary design criteria, based on strength or stiffness demands; in addition, a design method based on a sizing optimization process that employs genetic algorithms is also proposed, with the aim to compare and/or refine the results obtained with simplified approaches.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.13-20
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• 2016

Today's architecture can be best understood only through the recognition of pluralism, and, as is true of other building types, multiple design directions are prevalent for tall buildings. This contemporary design trend has produced many complex-shaped tall buildings, such as twisted, tilted and tapered form towers. Among many different structural systems developed for tall buildings, the outrigger system, with its inherent structural efficiency and flexibility in façade design, is widely used for contemporary tall buildings. This paper studies structural performance of outrigger systems employed for complex-shaped tall buildings. Twisted, tilted and tapered tall buildings are designed with outrigger structures, and their structural performance is investigated. For the twisted outrigger study, the buildings are twisted up to 3 degrees per floor. In the tilted outrigger study, the angles of tilting range from 0 to 13 degrees. The impact of eccentricity is investigated for gravity as well as lateral loads in tilted towers. In the study of tapered outrigger structures, the angles of tapering range from 0 to 3 degrees. Parametric structural models are generated using appropriate computer programs for these studies, and the models are exported to structural engineering software for design and analyses.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Advanced Composite Structures
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.14-20
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• 2015

In this study, we propose an innovative lateral force distribution building system between tall buildings by utilizing the difference of moment of inertia, as the alternative design for highly integrated city area. Considering a tri-axial symmetric conditions and boundary conditions for the three-dimensional building structure system, a two-dimensional model is composed. In the proposed indeterminate structural model, important design variables are determined for obtaining minimum horizontal deflections, reactions and bending moments at the ground level of the buildings. Regarding a case of the provided two spatial structures connected to 4 buildings, the optimum location of middle located spatial structure is 45% from the top of the building, which minimize the end moments at the bottom of the buildings. In the considered verification examples, reduced drifts at the top location of the building systems are validated against static wind pressure loads and static earthquake loads. The suggested hybrid building system will improve the safety and reliability of the system due to the added internal truss-dome structures in terms of more than 30% reduced drift and vibration through the development of convergence of tall buildings and spatial structures.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.427-440
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• 2008

Estimates of wind-induced wind effects on tall buildings are based largely on 1980s technology. Such estimates can vary significantly depending upon the wind engineering laboratory producing them. We describe an efficient database-assisted design (DAD) procedure allowing the realistic estimation of wind-induced internal forces with any mean recurrence interval in any individual member. The procedure makes use of (a) time series of directional aerodynamic pressures recorded simultaneously at typically hundreds of ports on the building surface, (b) directional wind climatological data, (c) micrometeorological modeling of ratios between wind speeds in open exposure and mean wind speeds at the top of the building, (d) a physically and probabilistically realistic aerodynamic/climatological interfacing model, and (e) modern computational resources for calculating internal forces and demand-to-capacity ratios for each member being designed. The procedure is applicable to tall buildings not susceptible to aeroelastic effects, and with sufficiently large dimensions to allow placement of the requisite pressure measurement tubes. The paper then addresses the issue of accounting explicitly for uncertainties in the factors that determine wind effects. Unlike for routine structures, for which simplifications inherent in standard provisions are acceptable, for tall buildings these uncertainties need to be considered with care, since over-simplified reliability estimates could defeat the purpose of ad-hoc wind tunnel tests.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.603-619
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• 2014

Soft storey buildings are characterised by having a storey that has a large amount of open space. This soft storey creates a major weak point during an earthquake. As the soft stories are typically associated with retail spaces and parking garages, they are often on the lower levels of tall building structures. Thus, when these stories collapse, the entire building can also collapse, causing serious structural damage that may render the structure completely unusable. The use of special soft storey is predominant in the tall building structures constructed by several local developers, making the issue important for local building structures. In this study, the effect of the incorporation of an isolator on the seismic behaviour of tall building structures is examined. The structures are subjected to earthquakes typical of the local city, and the isolator is incorporated with the appropriate isolator time period and damping ratio. A FEM-based computational relationship is proposed to increase the storey height so as to incorporate the isolator with the same time period and damping ratio for both a lead rubber bearing (LRB) and high-damping rubber bearing (HDRB). The study demonstrates that the values of the FEM-based structural design parameters are greatly reduced when the isolator is used. It is more beneficial to incorporate a LRB than a HDRB.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.179-191
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• 2021

Tall buildings have generally been developed as solo towers. With the increase of the heights of tall buildings from about 10-story buildings to supertall and megatall buildings, their structural systems have evolved from interior structures to exterior structures and combined/mixed systems. This paper reviews structural systems developed for solo supertall and megatall buildings and discusses the challenges they face in terms of structural performance and architectural design as the building heights are ever increased. As a viable and more sustainable design alternative to extremely tall solo towers, superframed conjoined towers are presented. Their structural performances are investigated in comparison with solo tower structures. Further, architectural potentials of superframed conjoined towers are explored through design studies.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.189-200
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• 1999

In this paper, a new algorithm for active control design of structures is proposed and investigated. The algorithm preserves the decoupling property of the modal vibration equation and eliminates the spillover problem, which is the main shortcoming in the independent modal space control(IMSC) algorithm. With linear quadratic regulator(LQR) control law, the analytical solution of algebraic Riccati equation and the optimal actuator control force are obtained, and the control design procedure is significantly simplified. A numerical example for the control design of a tall building subjected to wind loads demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in reducing the acceleration and displacement responses of tall buildings under wind actions.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.1 no.3
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• pp.169-179
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• 2012

The development history, the current situation and the future of the performance-based seismic design of building structures in China are presented in this paper. Firstly, the evolution of performance-based seismic design of building structures specified in the Chinese codes for seismic design of buildings of the edition 1974, 1978, 1989, 2001 and 2010 are introduced and compared. Secondly, in two parts, this paper details the provisions of performance-based seismic design in different Chinese codes. The first part is about the "Code for Seismic Design of Buildings" (GB50011) (edition 1989, 2001 and 2010) and "Technical Specification for Concrete Structures of Tall Building", which presents the concepts and methods of performance-based seismic design adopted in Chinese codes; The second part is about "Management Provisions for Seismic Design of Outof-codes High-rise Building Structures" and "Guidelines for Seismic Design of Out-of-codes High-rise Building Structures", which concludes the performance-based seismic design requirements for high-rise building structures over the relevant codes in China. Finally, according to those mentioned above, this paper pointed out the imperfections of current performance-based seismic design in China and proposed the possible direction for further improvement.

• Journal of Korean Association for Spatial Structures
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• v.5 no.4 s.18
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• pp.101-108
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• 2005

The investigations for mitigating wind-induced excitations of tall buildings have been carried out. The aerodynamic modification of a building shape changing the cross-section with height through tapering, which alters the flow pattern around the building, could reduce wind induced excitations of tall buildings. The fart that a tapered tall building might spread the vortex-shedding over a broad range of frequencies makes more effective for reducing acrosswind responses has been established. In this paper, to investigate the tapering effect for reducing wind-induced responses of a tapered tall building, high-frequency force-balance test was conducted. The six types of building models which have different taper ratio of 2.5%, 5%, 7.5%, 10%, 15% and one basic building model of a square cross-section were tested under the two typical boundary layers representing suburban and urban flow environment. The effect of wind direction was also considered.