20-11-2012-SUMMARY OF E-CONFERENCE ON TALL BUILDING

The E-Conference is going to be conducted from 19-11-12 to 28-11-12.

TO DAY 20-11-12 E-conference on TALL BUILDINGs continued with the following

Moderators:

Prof Dr.Swaminathan Krishnan

Prof Dr.CVR Murry

Alpa Sheth
T.RangaRajan.E-Confer. Raconteur

*************************************************************

FOR 10 QUESTIONS by Er.T.RangaRajan on 19-11-12’s posting

1. In tall buildings the wind force Dominates rather than Seismic forces for design
purpose. Is it Correct?
If yes, what is the boundary i.e the height or storey levels?
2. As it is known that as the building height is increasing then the WIND LOAD
dominates for design while the SEISMIC forces dominates when the height of building
low i.e. Low rise buildings. Is there any boundary say upto 10 floors the wind load need
not be considered ?
The above 2 questions are answered by Madam Alpha Seth in her posting under the
link:
http://www.sefindia.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13146

Books and References : Link:

http://www.sefindia.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13136

The posting created on 19-11-12 by Er.T.RangaRajan has the followings with

1. 3 books from Er.T.RangaRajan,

2. 6 books by Dr.N.S,
3. Several reports by Dr.N.S.
SUMMORY OF 19-11-12:

Posted by Er.T.RangaRajan, Raconteur E-Conferenc.

Seismic Design of Cast-in-Place Concrete Diaphragms, Chords, and Collectors

A Guide for Practicing Engineers:

The above reference from NIST is posted by Er.T.RangaRajan for those interested to
learn more on Seismic aspect.

Link:

http://www.sefindia.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13152

Er.T.RangaRajan has raised the following question with respect to the note from
Dr.S.Krishnan and requested his comment on this.

While going through the welcome address by Prof.Swaminathan Krishnan I observed

the following words:

On the face of it, this seems to be a ratification of the ACI-‐318 seismic

provisions and suggests that such a code could be adopted for tall building
design the world over.

But in the Recommendations for the Seismic Design of High-rise Buildings” by Michael
Willford Andrew Whittaker Ron Klemencic from council of Tall Building and Urban
Habitat is stated as below:

Whilst these codes( IBC, ICBO,1997) are referenced for the design of high-rise buildings
in many countries, in part because the UBC still forms the basis for many national
building codes, they are not suitable for the design of high-rise buildings for the
following reasons:

1) They were developed for application to low and medium-rise buildings.

2) They permit only a limited number of structural systems for

buildings taller than 49m in height, which are not economic for buildings of significantly
greater height, and do not include systems that are appropriate for many high rise
buildings.

3) Rules appropriate at or below 49m are not necessarily valid at 100+m in height.
4) The use of elastic response analysis with force reduction factors (denoted R in the
United States) for strength design is inappropriate for buildings where several modes of
vibration contribute significantly to the seismic response along each axis of a building. I
request Dr.S.Krishnan's Comment on this.

Er.Suraj. has again to- day 20-11-12 posed many items on each of the following
aspect for Tall Buildings:

Accessing construction materials to higher floors.

1 Main construction supporting activity is considered transporting required materials

to working locations on higher floors.
2 Major materials can be classified into temporary, preparatory & permanent
requirements. 3 Temporary requirement is withdrawn after its successful use.
4 Preparatory requirement is removed from site by dismantling after its successful
use.

And the list goes up to 21.

B. Accessing Ready Mixed Concrete To Higher Level Floors By Pumping.

1. As discussed earlier for an example, concrete pumping to a height of 100 m

requires an arrangement suitable for pumping 1.9 T weight of concrete, with well
designed anchored arrangement for steel pipes worth 3.1 T. 2. 100 levels structure
may require arrangements suitable for 350 to 400 m. 3. 200 levels structure may
require arrangements suitable for 700 to 800 m.4. Considering distance to pump
concrete to various higher floors does not appeal to be carried out in a systematic
conventional method.
5. Conventionally, to multistoried buildings, pumping is carried out using mobile
pumps say up to 100 m without encountering major issues.

And the item of works goes up to 26.6.

C. Air Conditioning Provisions Within Tall Buildings

1. HVAC is though not related to structure directly, but impacts on its interfaces,
which contemplation should be included at design stage itself.
2. Current practice to network air conditioning system centrally controlled & super
managed by building management system has been in effect for long on state of art
basis.
3. Such practice has been well affected for normal building & even work satisfactorily
for multistory buildings supplying comfort level of conditioned air.

4. For tall buildings, requirements always vary & to centrally condition all
areas/premises, raise certain questions, which designers should care about.

5. What % of premises covered areas shall be affected by occupation of equipment?

6. Shall it be convenient to install all equipment at one level on roof terrace or it

would be better to install all on ground level located within service building?

There are 33 items including the above 6.

D. Potable Water Distribution To Tall Buildings.

Er.Suraj has listed 30 items in the above topic.

E. Safely Working On External Envelope.

Under the above he has given 20 items to follow.

F. Electrical Supplies To Tall Buildings.

For this Er.Suraj has listed 30 items.

Any one need to know in detail kindly go through his 20-11-12’s posting.

Er.Sunilgurtoo/ JORDAHL/DECON India has posted :

I would like to know, in TALL Buildings overseas people use STUD RAILS for PUNCHING
Shear Reinforcement, In India why this practise is not being used.

We have introduced the DECON Stud Rails and have supplied to 4-5 projects wherein
these buildings are 8-9 floors.

Will the STUD RAIL concept good for the TALL Buildings in India.

Er.Partha Pratim Roy

Vice President (Technical)
ADAPT Concrete Software
www.adaptsoft.comHas appreciated on starting the E-Conference on Tall Buildings and
went on adding the questions:

1. What should be ideal classification of Tall Building?

2. About Material, let us talk more Steel and Post Tension Concrete. As use of
Reinforced Concrete will reduce the head room (for the presence of beam and thicker
slab) and increase the building weight thus experience higher magnitude of Seismic
Force.

3. Can we have a single document (according to the topics) containing details at the
end of the conference?

Er.Abhio has raised the subject on Pile raft asked for some clarifications as
below:

Today every large structure is analyzed and designed using stiffness method programs
with detailed study by FEA where appropriate. However, only specialised consultants
are carrying out the analysis of piles/ pile groups in realistic geotechnical FE models.

This leads to the following questions:

1. How is the pile-soil interface modeled in these geotechnical models?

2. Is it possible to use pile stiffness calculated from geotechnical models in

analysis of the foundation raft and superstructure?

3. Is it possible to model the interaction between different piles in a pile

group and between the pile cap/ soil and piles?

Er.Kapildingare has sought clarification for:

What wouldbe the difference in load sharing in two cases,

1) Tall R.C.C. building with all walls (internal as well as external) as R.C.C. structural
walls, in which type all walls columns, beams are casted together(like in aluminum
formwork like in Mihan or similar)
2) Tall R.C.C. framed buildings with walls as partition walls and non structural
members in which frames are made first and non structural partitions later.

With respect to following points

1) What type of loads R.C.C. walls would carry?

2) Would bending in beams in both the cases same or different ?
3) Would columns carry same axial force and moments in both the cases?
4) Would these walls act as shear walls? What would be their role with respect to lateral
loads?
5) If these walls are discontinued at stilt floor what precautions are taken to offset such
high stiffness discontinuity?
6) In analyzing such frames with structural walls how these walls are modeled?

BOOKS AND REFERENCES: Er.Nachko has posted the book from PEER and
given the link

PEER/ATC 72-1: Modeling and acceptance criteria for seismic desing and analysis of tall
buildings, Prepared for: Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center/Prepared by:
Applied Technology Council, October 2010

Er. Harsoda has given a link on a research paper on WIND EFFECT ON TALL
BUILDINGS.

Econf_Moderator has on the subject,

Pointed discussions on tall buildings - Use of Flat Slab -co

Has welcome all to participate in the discussion and share their knowledge
and started again as:
To start the ball rolling,
What is the general opinion of SEFIans to the use of flat slab with core shear wall
system as a structural system for tall buildings?
- Should it be allowed in Zone V?
- Up to what max height?
- What are the conditions one may impose for use of such a system for tall buildings?
Look forward to hearing from you all on this topic .

Er.Ishacon has replied for the above as:

Let us first be clear about using flat slab or flat plates - the latter seems to have caught
the fancy of contractors from Mumbai.

1. If it is flat plate, I would be reluctant to advocate it for Zone V unless we do not

insist on Dual system as per IS 1893, due to the higher shear at shear wall and plate
junctions. May consider it for buildings up to 50 M height ensuring performance criteria
for human comfort in terms of the lateral drift. In any case Flat slab with drop panel
would be always more desirable from performance basis. To what height , will still be a
question I am not sure.
2. Having said as above, it becomes imperative that provisions of IS 1893 need to be
streamlined to determine appropriate Time period for shear wall buildings

Dr.N.S has consented the views of Er.Ishacon and expressed as I totally agree with Er
Agarwal, as many cases of failures have been reported in the case of flat plates/slabs
located in EQ zones. Flat plates in Zone V, even in ordinary buildings, is questionable
without dual lateral force resisting system. Research in the area is still continuing.

The use of Stud shear reinforcement has been advocated and found to be better in
increasing the shear strength of the slab than other types of shear reinforcement.

For Yesterday 19-11-12’s posting by Moderator Madm Alpa on

How should one define min stiffness requirement of tall buil

Reply by Er. vikas.pai is :

Based on my nuclear, heavy civil and bridge sector experience, I would say that the
natural frequency of the structure should be the defining parameter. Actually the lateral
deflections are derived from the natural frequency calculations and should be treated as
thumb rule. But for all buildings that do not follow general rules of aspect ratio, 'soft
storey' and/or deemed to attract higher importance than normal, controlling natural
frequency within limits shall be the only way of satisfying basic engineering principles.
Codes are just the guidelines and not 'bible'. Engineering judgment of what would work
in the conditions given are of paramount importance and hence would need to be
formed on sound engineering principles.

Er.malikWaqar has asked specially Dr.N.S to clarify his doubt:

What are limitations for later drifts of high rise building?

Can you please mention any reference from ASCE/ACI/IS standards?

Dr.N.S’s reply is :

Please refer Er Alpa's email in which she has stated the drift limits for wind and EQ are
different in Indian code and due to that Wind only governs in serviceability limit states.

I am giving the following data based on a PPP presentation by Thornton Tomasetti, a

leading consulting firm in Tall buildings.

• Overall Building: No P-Delta

US (10-20 year wind) H/400 to H/500
• Interstorey Wind Drift: No P-Delta
US (10-20 year) h/350
• Interstorey Seismic drift: with P-Delta
Inelastic drift < 0.01h-0.02h (h/100-h/50)

Er.T.RangaRajan has posted some quotes in response to the above post from
SP240: Performance-Based Design of Concrete Building for Wind Loads

Chapter 2: The Nature of Wind Loads and Dynamic Response by D. Boggs and
Dragovich.

The ASCE Standard [ASCE 7-05] classifies a structure as dynamically sensitive, or

“flexible” if f0 < 1 Hz, otherwise it is considered to be “rigid.” The classification used by
the ASCE Standard is widely accepted as a reasonable boundary between dynamic and
rigid behavior. Consequently, this paper is focused on tall and medium-height
buildings for which f0 < 1 Hz, i.e. flexible buildings.

Approximate rules for determining f0 exist and will be briefly described. Where a
building is designed for reasonable drift ratio, one widely used approximate formula is <
1 Hz, i.e. flexible buildings. Approximate rules for determining f0 exist and will be briefly
described. Where a building is designed for reasonable drift ratio, one widely used
approximate formula is
f0 = 46/H (H = building height in m)
= 150/H (H in ft) (1)
which appears to agree well with measured values of many buildings worldwide.
However, calculated frequencies of buildings in the U.S. appear to be better described
by
75/H < f0 < 100/H (H in ft) (2)
or, alternately as
75 <f0H < 100 (H in ft) (2b)
Equation (2b) can be inferred directly from Fig. 2, where the y-axis is the product of f0
H. Note that if one considers a 10-foot story height, the upper bound of 100/H in
equation (2a) is equivalent to the approximate period formula of T = 0.1N, used in
many seismic building codes, where T is the period of vibration and N is the number of
stories. The above equations imply that the calculated frequencies are typically less
than the measured frequencies, thus conservatively classifying structures as flexible
based on calculation. Because of this, it is recommended that equation (2a) be used as
a preliminary indicator of f0, and a possible flexible condition. If the structure is flexible,
it is essential that the designer determine the natural frequency and mode shapes of
the first few modes of vibration accurately. This is typically accomplished using
eigenvalue analysis routines in commercial three-dimensional finite element computer
programs.

Against the posting on Geotechnical Issues in Tall Buildings - Note from Jaydeep Wa on
19-11-12,

the reply by Er.Suraj has given under the head Soil Investigation & Reporting
brief a list of 22 items to follow.

P.K.Mallick has asked the question How do we define soft rock and hard rock from
soil investigation point of view? for clarification.

Post under General Discussions:

http://www.sefindia.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=52567#52567

In the above link Er. K.Gangadharan has posted some important aspect on Pumping of
concrete for Tall buildings with a quote from S.A.Reddy the ex Joint Managing Director
of Gammon India Ltd.

It needs a response from experts.

T.RangaRajan.

E-Confer. Raconteur