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The cost efficiency by using outriggers in tall buildings

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 THE COST EFFICIENCY BY USING
OUTRIGGERS IN TALL BUILDINGS
1
Ibrahim Mousleh, 2Mustafa Batikha
1
Engineering Manager, Profiles R.H. (L.L.C.),
2
Assistant Professor, Heriot-Watt University

Abstract
Tall buildings construction is in high demanding worldwide for many reasons such as the
rapid growth in population together with limited space and the more requirements of the
business activities to be localized in city centers. This need for buildings to be raised in
height requires special lateral resisting systems to obey the provisions of the codes
regarding deflection and human comfort. Outrigger system is one of these lateral resisting
systems which has lately confirmed its efficiency as an economic system and having well
structural advantages to tall buildings. However, the position and the number of the
outriggers is still under considerations. Therefore, this research aims to study the effect of
the outrigger location on the building' cost. To satisfy this aim, a 35-story building was
studied under both seismic and wind loads. The system of the building was taken as a
dual system of steel frames and reinforced-concrete core. Then, outriggers in different
positions were applied to the building to check the gain in the structural performance and
cost through an optimum design. At the end of this work, it was shown that the outrigger
can reduce the cost of the building significantly more than 25%.

Keywords - Tall Building, outrigger, optimal structural design, cost analysis.

Proceedings of IIRAJ, International Conference (9th ICCI-SEM 2018) Dubai, UAE, 01-02 December 2018, ISBN: 978-93-53218-15-7
3
 The cost efficiency by using outriggers in tall
buildings
[1]
Ibrahim Mousleh, [2] Mustafa Batikha
[1]
Engineering Manager, Profiles R.H. (L.L.C.), [2] Assistant Professor, Heriot-Watt University
[1]
[email protected], [2] [email protected]
the high-rise buildings is the outrigger. The outrigger
Abstract— Tall buildings construction is in high demanding system is a combination of a central core and a horizontal
worldwide for many reasons such as the rapid growth in stiff system of truss elements or deep beam connecting the
population together with limited space and the more
core to the external columns connected together by a belt
requirement of the business activities to be localized in city
centers. This need for buildings to be raised in height requires truss or deep girder at the same levels of the outriggers [2].
special lateral resisting systems to obey the provisions of the In this case, outriggers reduce the moment in the central
codes regarding deflection and human comfort. Outrigger core as seen in Fig.1 by transferring part of it to the outer
system is one of these lateral resisting systems which have lately columns in form of axial forces consist of
confirmed its efficiency as an economic system and having well compression-tension couples [1,2]. Eventually, the
structural advantages to tall buildings. However, the position
contribution of the exterior columns in resisting the
and the number of outriggers are still under considerations.
Therefore, this research aims to study the effect of the outrigger bending of the structure will increase the flexural stiffness
location on the building' cost. To satisfy this aim, a 35-story significantly. In the same way, mega columns at corners can
building was studied under both seismic and wind loads. The support the outriggers as well. Despite the fact that
system of the building was taken as a dual system of steel outriggers are internal structures, the contribution of belt
frames and reinforced-concrete core. Then, outriggers in trusses and mega columns represents large planner spread
different positions were applied to the building to check the gain
of the building stresses. The importance of the belt truss
in the structural performance and cost through an optimum
design. At the end of this work, it was shown that the outrigger makes some recent studies demonstrate the possibility of
can reduce the cost of the building significantly more than 25%. designing the belt truss not only to resist the lateral load,
but to mitigate possible disproportionate collapse caused
Index Terms—Tall Buildings, outrigger, optimal structural by extreme events [3]. It should be pointed out that, in
design, cost analysis. order to increase the energy dissipation beside the extra
stiffness, buckling restrained bracing members can be used
in the outrigger [4, 5].
I. INTRODUCTION The location of the outrigger in building plays an
Tall buildings started in the late nineteenth century in important role in the performance of the high-rise building.
the United States of America and have become a For example, Patil and Sangle [6] examined a 2-D steel
worldwide necessity mainly to ease the mobility of building under nonlinear static pushover analysis where the
businesses by maximizing the usage of cities centers and to position of the outrigger was changed. It was found that
minimize cities creep toward green areas. A rapid growth in adding outrigger at top decreases the roof displacement,
demand for going higher and increasing the number of while a second outrigger is required to reduce the story
stories has appeared in many countries which consequently displacement. It was recommended that the second
turns tall buildings into a global phenomenon. This outrigger should be at 0.3H to 0.6H of the building as an
architectural phenomenon with multiple usages from optimal location [6]. In another work of Zhou etal. [7] using
commercial to residential and mix usage dictates certain 2-D model, it was concluded that the optimal allocation of
ways of analysis and approaches for structural designers to the outrigger to reduce the story drift is at 0.6H to 0.63H
resist both gravity loads and lateral forces generated by from the base for wind load application, while it is at 0.63H
wind and seismic activities [1]. The most important to 0.67H from the base in case of seismic forces. On
challenge in the design of tall buildings is the effect of another hand, the position of the outrigger affects the
lateral loads on the building to accommodate deflections, weight of the primary structural elements. In a recent study
inter-story drifts and, of course, occupants’ comfort. by Park et al. [8], it was found that an outrigger at 0.61H
Many structural systems and construction materials have from the base minimizes the sections of the primary
been introduced to tall buildings to satisfy an efficient structural elements. However, all the previous studies used
structural performance. On the other hand, the 2D-model to explore the effect of the outrigger-location on
cost-efficiency of the used structural system plays an the structural performance of tall buildings. Moreover,
important role in the selection of that system. none of those studies provide an idea about how the cost
One of the most important used systems these days in of a high-rise building could be affected by changing the
position of the outrigger. Therefore, this study and through
3D model will verify the best location of an outrigger to

Proceedings of 9th International Conference on Contemporary Issues in Science, Engineering & Management (9th ICCI-SEM 2018),
Dubai, UAE, 01-02 December 2018
1
Mousleh and Batikha The cost efficiency by using outriggers in tall buildings

deliver cost saving. connected to columns using pin connections.

- Beams are pin connected to core wall.
- All beams in X direction for all floors have the same
section properties.
- All beams in Y direction for all floors have the same
section properties.
- The diagonal elements of all outriggers/ belt trusses
have the same section properties.
Material properties are given in Table I, whereas lateral
loads inputs are shown in Table II.

Table I Materials properties

Steel sections Concrete
Es νs fy Ec νc f ’c
Fig.1 Core moment with and without outriggers. [1]
(GPa) -- (MPa) (GPa) -- (MPa)
II. LINEAR ELASTIC STATIC ANALYSIS 200 0.3 345 20 0.2 40

Table II Lateral loads inputs

A. Models
Seismic Data
A 35-story tall building of a plan of 36x40m (Fig.2) and
Risk
story height of 4m without outrigger (Model 0) was S1 SS TL Site Class
category
analyzed and designed against gravity and lateral loads
(g) (g) (SEC) -- --
using appropriate load combinations and Finite Element
1 0.3 12 III D
Linear Elastic Analysis of SAP 2000-ver19.2.1[9]. Fig. 2, also,
Wind Data
shows that the building is made of steel columns and
V Exposure H LH X
central concrete core. To check the effect of the outrigger
(m/Sec) -- (m) (m) (m)
location, four more models were prepared based on Model
52 B 30 60 1000
0 as follows:
1. Outrigger in floor 12, at the third of the building height
from the base (Model 12).
2. Outrigger in floor 18, at the middle of the building height
from the base (Model 18).
3. Outrigger in floor 24, at two third of the building height
from the base (Model 24).
4. Outrigger in floor 35, at building top (Model 35).
All 3D models can be seen in Fig.3. Each model was
optimized individually to minimize the sections of the
structural elements at the time of introducing the
outrigger. Therefore, the seismic forces vary among models
due to the change in the self-weight of the building after
the optimization in sections took place.
B. Inputs, Loads and Assumptions
For this study, several codes and standards were applied
to define the materials being used, loads applied, design
procedure [10, 11, 12, 13].
The modelling assumptions were adopted as follows:
- Frame element was used to model all beams and
columns, whereas area element was used to
simulate the concrete core. Frame element is a
two-node element, while the area element is a Fig. 2 Model 0 typical floor
4-node element where each node in the model
has 6 degrees of freedom [9]. In this study, the ultimate state was adopted for element
- The building was assumed as fixed with the base. design using the load combinations according to ASCE 7-10
- Because the weak axis of all steel columns is in Y [10] as follow:
direction (Fig.2), the contribution of the frames 1.2 D +1.6 L (1)
was considered in X direction only. Therefore, the 0.9 D + W (2)
beams in Y direction were modeled to be 1.2 D + W + L (3)
0.75333 D +1.3 QE (4)

Proceedings of 9th International Conference on Contemporary Issues in Science, Engineering & Management (9th ICCI-SEM 2018),
Dubai, UAE, 01-02 December 2018
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 Mousleh and Batikha The cost efficiency by using outriggers in tall buildings

1.34667 D + 1.3 QE +0.5 L (5) Table III Optimal Dimensions of Structural Elements, Model 0
Story Columns section RCC Core Thickness
Where, D is the dead load, L is the live load, W is the wind -- -- (m)
load and QE is the horizontal seismic force. 35-25 UC 305x305x283 0.25
24-19 UC 305x305x340 0.25
18-17 UC 305x305x340 0.3
16-15 UC 305x305x340 0.35
14 UC 356x406x393 0.4
13-12 UC 356x406x393 0.45
11-10 UC 356x406x393 0.5
9-8 UC 356x406x467 0.55
7 UC 356x406x467 0.6
6 UC 356x406x467 0.65
5 UC 356x406x551 0.65
4-3 UC 356x406x551 0.7
2 UC 356x406x551 0.75
1 UC 356x406x551 0.8

Fig. 3 The analyzed models: a) Model 0, b) Model 12, c) Model 18,

d) Model24, e) Model 35

III. MODEL 0 OPTIMIZATION

Fig. 4 Seismic moment in the RC core for all models using the
As addressed in section II-A, changing in the sectional optimized sections of model 0
properties took place several times due to the optimization
process in order to obtain the minimum sections which can All models were optimized using same procedure
obey the standards' requirements. Changing in loads followed in model 0. Table IV compares the variable
applied to the building occurred every time there was a outputs for all models after optimization. Table IV
change in the structural sections because of the demonstrates about 6% reduction in the total weight of the
modification in the self-weight and the stiffness of each building in presence of an outrigger system. Therefore,
resisting system which causes a redistribution in forces same reduction in the base shear and base moment by
among the structural elements. For model 0, Table III seismic action can be observed. On the other hand, Table
shows the variation in the thickness of the central IV presents that an increase in the story-drift ratio comes
Reinforced-Concrete (RC) core and steel columns along the by including an outrigger. Outrigger at floor 12 or floor 35
height of the building. increases slightly the story-drift of few stories behind the
The RC slab was designed to have a thickness of 160mm allowable drift (2% [10]), whereas an outrigger at floor 24
and supported by steel beams of UKB 457x191x133 in X (0.68H from the base) is the best solution. This is almost
direction and UKB 305x165x64 in Y direction. the same result of Zhou et al. [7] that an outrigger at 0.67H
Using same optimized sections of model 0, the effect of from the base improves the performance of the building by
outrigger on the building sample of this paper can be decreasing the inter-story drift.
shown in Fig. 4. It can be seen from Fig.4 how the outrigger Regarding the roof displacement by wind, it can be seen
reduces the moment in the core as given in Fig.1. that the optimization causes higher displacement when the
Moreover, the closer the outrigger to the base, more outrigger is applied than model 0 without an outrigger
reduction in the base overturning moment can be although all displacements are below the displacement
obviously noticed where it reaches 23% less in the case of limit (H/500=280mm) [2]. However, outrigger at floor 18 or
the outrigger in floor 12. floor 24 registered a lower displacement than other
outrigger positions. The roof acceleration is almost similar

Proceedings of 9th International Conference on Contemporary Issues in Science, Engineering & Management (9th ICCI-SEM 2018),
Dubai, UAE, 01-02 December 2018
3
Mousleh and Batikha The cost efficiency by using outriggers in tall buildings

for all models and below the limit of 0.2m/sec2 [2] to satisfy building were evaluated to do a construction cost
the human comfort condition. It is worth mentioning that estimation for each model.
the seismic effect governs the design of the example
building rather than the wind effect. Moreover, Eq. 5
dominates the results for Model 12 and Model 18, whereas
Model 24 and Model 35 were affected more by Eq. 4.

Table IV Results for models after optimization

Model M0 M12 M18 M24 M35
Total Weight
(103 Ton) 42.98 40.19 40.25 40.27 40.56

Seismic Base
Shear
17.01 15.90 15.92 15.93 16.05
(103 kN)

Max Seismic Fig. 5 Relative differences in seismic story-drift ratio along the height
Story Drift between models with outrigger and Model 0
1.72 2.15 1.91 1.75 2.09
Ratio (%)

Max Seismic
Base Moment
in Core 17.997 16.877 16.880 16.879 17.097
(105kN.m)

Max Roof
Wind
Displacement 200 241 221 223 251
(mm)

Max Roof
Wind
51.24 54.59 54.66 54.49 53.82
Acceleration Fig. 6 Relative differences in wind deflection along the height between
models with outrigger and Model 0
(10-3 m/sec2)
In Dubai, the construction cost in the market of a cubic
The Relative seismic drifts of models in comparison with
meter of cast-in-situ concrete can be assessed by 550 $,
Model 0 are illustrated in Fig.5, where it can be noted that
while a ton of steel members after painting and installation
a sudden drop in the drift occurs at the position of the
can cost 2200 $.
outrigger. Model 24 is having the minimum relative drift at
Table V shows the total steel members weight and total
floor 24 (57.6 %). Also, it can be shown that, in all models,
shear walls concrete volume of all models. It can be seen
the drift in several floors exceeds the corresponding drift of
that installing an outrigger reduces the usage of materials
model 0 because of the minimization in sections due to the
significantly. For example, using an outrigger at floor 24
optimization procedure.
decreases the steel weight and reinforced concrete volume
In case of wind response, Fig. 6 explores the relative
by 24% and 26% respectively. As a result, the cost is
differences in the deflections by the wind between the
considerably reduced (Table V).
models with an outrigger and Model 0 without an
Fig. 7 illustrates the relative cost differences of all
outrigger. All models with an outrigger show more
models with an outrigger in comparison with Model 0
deflection than Model 0 without an outrigger although
without an outrigger. It can be shown from Fig. 7 that using
deflections of all models are still below the allowable
outrigger reduces the construction cost of the structural
displacement (H/500[10]). It should be pointed out that an
elements by at least 20%. On the other hand, an outrigger
outrigger at the top (Model 35) produces the maximum
at floor 24 brings the construction cost to the lowest by
deflections along most of the building height in comparison
24%. This is an evidence that an outrigger at 0.68H from
with other models.
the base produces less construction cost. It should be
noted that the reduction in cost of substructure and
IV. COST ANALYSIS
footing works was not considered in the current study. It is
For the models after optimization, the weight of steel expected that less foundation is required here due to the
elements and the volume of the RC concrete used in each lighter weight of materials and lower overturning moment

Proceedings of 9th International Conference on Contemporary Issues in Science, Engineering & Management (9th ICCI-SEM 2018),
Dubai, UAE, 01-02 December 2018
4
Mousleh and Batikha The cost efficiency by using outriggers in tall buildings

come with the application of an outrigger. at floor 12 as demonstrated in the current study. This
reduction will allow minimizing the thickness of the
Table V Material’ usage and cost central core considerably and provide extra spaces in
Model M0 M12 M18 M24 M35 the case of architectural restrictions.
Steel 3. An outrigger can decrease the total weight of the
Members’ building by 6%. Sequentially, the effects come from the
Weight 4.561 3.729 3.584 3.473 3.659 seismic action will be reduced.
(103Ton) 4. An outrigger at floor 24 (0.68H from the base) improve
the performance of the building against high inter-drift
RCC Volume story, while an outrigger at floor 12 (0.34H from the
of Core base) or at the roof increases the inter-story drift.
2.478 1.691 1.780 1.842 1.869
(103m3) Therefore, an outrigger at 0.68H from the base is
optimal to improve the structural performance against
Total Cost the seismic movement.
11.39 9.134 8.864 8.653 9.078
(106 $) 5. There are no much benefits in placing one outrigger at
the top of the building when it comes to lateral
displacement and story drift. Besides, it will increase
the bending moment for frame elements at the base
level. Top floor outrigger could help only in decreasing
the seismic drift at top floors.
6. It should be noted that designers need to pay attention
to concrete core shear stresses near the outrigger as it
increases sharply.
7. Cost wise, placing an outrigger into the building obtains
low construction cost of 20% at least. However, an
outrigger at 0.68H from the base could save 24% of
super-structural works cost which makes this position
an optimal choice.

REFERENCES
Fig. 7 Relative differences in total cost between models with an
outrigger and Model 0 without an outrigger
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reach up to 23% reduction in the case of an outrigger 2013.

Proceedings of 9th International Conference on Contemporary Issues in Science, Engineering & Management (9th ICCI-SEM 2018),
Dubai, UAE, 01-02 December 2018
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 Mousleh and Batikha The cost efficiency by using outriggers in tall buildings

[11] ACI 318-14, “Building code requirements for structural

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Buildings”, American Institute of Steel Construction, USA,
2016.

Proceedings of 9th International Conference on Contemporary Issues in Science, Engineering & Management (9th ICCI-SEM 2018),
Dubai, UAE, 01-02 December 2018
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