Taipei 101 Skyscraper

A materials study
by Masato Nagakane
IENG2020
 Author's Biography

Masato Nagakane was born in the city of Colón, Republic of Panamá in 1968.

His Japanese-French/Italian father and his Panamanian-Ecuadorian mother

provided a rich multicultural background that mimicked the cultural diversity of

his country .

He attended Saint Joseph La Salle Elementary and Middle School in Colón. He

later moved to Orlando, Florida where he finished high school at Bishop Moore

High School. Masato graduated from Valencia Community College in 1988 with a

degree in Fine Arts and attended The University of Central Florida from 1988 to

1991. A year later he moved to Greensboro NC where he attended The University

of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he received his certification as an

Interpreter for the Deaf and continued his studies of the arts.

As an artist, painter, Masato has received numerous awards throughout the

country and internationally. He is a well established painter and muralist.

Painting and mural commissions have been his mainstay for the last decade. As

an artist he has been able to acquire a diversity of skills outside his field ranging

from carpentry, teaching, interpreting, restoration, and the culinary field.

Throughout his overseas travels and the ingenuity required by complex or

very large pieces, he has gained a keen sensibility for utilizing spaces, aesthetics,

and the need for alternative sustainable solutions. Lacking the higher technical

skills to realize his visions, he decided this year to return to school at East Carolina

University in order to achieve this goal. Masato is currently enrolled in the B.S
Design program with a concentration in Architectural Technology. Although not

part of the curriculum, he is trying to incorporate courses from the Geography

field as well as Urban planning and Biological sciences into his degree field.

The Taipei 101 Tower

Building one of the world's tallest skyscrapers is a challenging undertaking.

Building it in Taipei adds exponentially to that challenge. Taipei 101 needed to

address typhoon winds, large potential earthquakes and weak soil conditions. The

structure depicts a stalk of bamboo, representing youth and longevity and

everlasting strength.

The Taipei 101 Tower contains the world's fastest and most comfortable

elevators. The building is an impressive tribute to steel, glass and incredibly

clever engineering. The design reflects the local Chinese culture; for example,

there are eight canted sections, this being the lucky number in Chinese. Each

section is embellished with a traditional Chinese symbol of fulfillment, the

symbols being large enough to be visible from the ground.

The Taipei 101 is located in the Hsinyi District of the city, the rapid-growing

“Manhattan” of Taipei. This is the future center of financial power in Taiwan. The

Taipei Municipal Government awarded development rights by tender for this Build-

Operate-Transfer project, the first ever in Taiwan, to an unprecedented consortium

of investors. Their mission was to develop a state-of-the-art building that formed

an integral part of the infrastructure for advancing Taipei towards becoming one

of the Asia Pacific Financial Centers.

The 101-story Taipei 101 tops out at 1,666 feet. The strength and the stiffness

requirements of the structure to resist gravity and lateral loads were achieved by

base structural members before the common problem of the occupant comfort

encountered in tall buildings could be worked out in the structural design of the

Taipei 101. A damping system was implemented to reduce the excessive lateral

accelerations from wind. In addition to its suspended dampening system the

structured is supported by a series of super columns that rise from its base to the

62nd floor.

The framing design had to solve five challenges. First was the unusual

building shape. The lowest 25 floors taper gradually inward, forming a truncated

pyramid. Above is a stack of eight, 8-story high modules with outward- sloping

walls, creating a ‘waist’ the 26th floor and setbacks at floors 34,42, etc. Second

was the need for great lateral stiffness, to limit sway in high winds and

earthquakes and reduce the potential for damage to non-structural elements.

Third was minimizing overall building mass, to reduce the cost of the deep bored-

pile foundation and to keep seismic forces as low as practical. Fourth was net

column uplift in this tall, slender and comparatively lightweight structure. The fifth
challenge was to provide a high level of safety in the enormous building for the

large tenant population and public attention would attract. Most designs achieve

the necessary strength by enlarging critical structural elements such as bracing.

The extraordinary height of Taipei 101 combined with the demands of its

environment called for additional innovations. The design achieves both strength

and flexibility for the tower through the use of high-performance steel

construction. Thirty-six columns support Taipei 101, including eight "mega-

columns" packed with 10,000-psi concrete. Every eight floors, outrigger trusses

connect the columns in the building's core to those on the exterior. These

features combine with the solidity of its foundation to make Taipei 101 one of the

most stable buildings ever constructed.

Steel met all the structural challenges that face the Taipei 101. Structural

steel framing provided great strength with minimal mass. The tower is made from

pliant steel, which is strong and yet has a low yield to ultimate tensile stress ratio

so as to be able to accommodate plastic strain in the event of natural disasters.

The steel is at the same time, weldable, so the concentration of alloying elements

permitted is rather low. The steel is micro alloyed, thermo mechanically processed

and accelerated cooled to produce a fine microstructure without the excessive use

of alloying elements which can compromise weldability. Five different kinds of

steel plates were used, with yield strengths in the range 412-510 MPa and tensile

strengths in the range 570-720 MPa. In all cases, the carbon equivalent was less

than 0.29. The plates were produced using the TMCP process, thermo mechanical

control process. Specially constructed steel processing plant are needed to

manufacture such alloys.

 The tower superstructure is a steel frame with ‘H’ shape steel beams acting

composite with the floor slab through shear studs, and floor concrete acting

composite with metal deck. Gravity loads are carried vertically by a variety of

columns. Within the core, sixteen columns are located at the crossing points of

four lines of bracing in each direction. The columns are box sections constructed

of steel plates, filled with concrete for added strength as well as stiffness at the

62nd floor and below. On the perimeter, up to the 26th floor, each of the four

building faces has two super columns, two sub-super columns, and two corner

columns.

Each face of the perimeter above the 26th floor has the two ‘super-columns’

continue upward. The super columns and sub-super columns are steel box

sections, filled with 10,000 psi high performance concrete on lower floors for

strength and stiffness up to the 62nd floor. Wrapped around the super columns is

a web of a ductile steel framework designed to bend during an earthquake. The

frames support the outward slope of the building, making possible the repeating

inverted pyramid shape.

On March 31, 2002, a 6.8-magnitude earthquake rocked Taipei. The tremor

was strong enough to topple two construction cranes from the 56th floor, then the

highest. Five people died in the accident, but an inspection showed no structural

damage to the building, and construction soon resumed.

Taipei 101's solution to counteract seismic activity up to 7 on the Richter

Magnitude scale, is a 730 ton tuned mass damper (TMD). It acts like a giant

pendulum to counteract the building's movement, reducing sway due to wind by

30 to 40 percent. Constructed by the specialty engineering firm Motioneering,

the damper was too heavy to be lifted by crane and had to be assembled on site.

Eight steel cables form a sling to support the ball, while eight viscous dampers act

like shock absorbers when the sphere shifts. Able to move 5 feet in any direction,

the Taipei tuned mass damper is the world's largest and heaviest. This gold

colored orb is on plain view from restaurants, bars and observation decks between

the 88th and 92nd stories. A bumper ring prevents the ball from swaying too far,

should that much swaying ever need to occur.

Taipei 101's characteristic blue-green glass curtain walls are double paned

and glazed, offer heat and protection from the sun sufficient to block external

heat by 50 percent, and can sustain impacts of 7 metric tons. Recycled water

meets 20-30 percent of the building's water needs. Upgrades are currently under

way to make Taipei 101 the world's tallest green building. Designed to use less

energy and water and provide better indoor air quality than a traditionally built

skyscraper of comparable size, TAIPEI 101 embarked on an 18-month renovation

to increase efficiency and further reduce the building's environmental footprint.

The owners are shooting for platinum certification under the U.S. Green

Building Council's Leadership in Environmental Standards standards for an

existing building. If successful, TAIPEI 101 would be the tallest existing building to

attain LEED-EBOM certification at the highest level possible.

The Taipei 101 was a record breaking endeavor that exceeded and is still

seeking to surpass expectations. Its Chinese traditional and symbolic design

lends the way for innovation, ingenuity, and a standard for future buildings of its

type and magnitude. From the specially created steel structure to its unique

shock dampening system , the tower is a marvel of engineering ingenuity. Green

building is the way of our future, by seeking the highest grade of LEED

certification , the Taipei 101 tower is the leading the way and setting a standard of

environmental consciousness in building.

The Taipei 101 building is a distinctive addition to the city’s skyline and the

exclusive group of the world’s tallest buildings. As befits those distinctions, its

structural design has addressed the demands of architectural form, typhoon winds

and seismic safety through creative steel framing and the composition of

performance specific materials.

Building Facts
• Architect – C.Y.Lee & Partners

• Structural Engineer – Shaw Shieh

• Structural Consult. – Thornton-Tomasetti Engineers, New York City

• Year Started – June 1998 (Mall already open)

• Total Height – 508m

• No. of Floors – 101

• Plan Area – 50m X 50m

• Cost – $ 700 million

• Building Use – Office Complex + Mall

• Parking - 83,000 m2, 1800 cars

• Retail - Taipei 101 Mall (77,033 m2)

• Offices - Taiwan Stock Exchange (198,347 m2)

ARCHITECTURAL STYLE

• Pagoda Style

• Eight prominent sections

• Chinese lucky number “8”

• In China, 8 is a homonym for prosperity

• Even number = “rhythm and symmetry”

BUILDING FRAME

• Materials

• 60ksi Steel

• 10,000 psi Concrete

• Systems

• Outrigger Trusses

• Moment Frames

• Belt Trusses

• Lateral Load Resistance

• Braced Moment Frames in the building’s core

• Outrigger from core to perimeter

• Perimeter Moment Frames

• Shear walls

• Basement and first 8 floors

CONSTRUCTION PROCESS

• 380 piles with 3 inch concrete slab.

• Mega columns- 8 cm thick steel & 10,000 psi concrete infill to provide for

overturning.

• Walls - 5 & 7 degree slope.

• 106,000 tons of steel, grade 60- 25% stronger.

• 6 cranes on site – steel placement.

• Electrical & Mechanical.

• Curtain wall placement.

CHALLENGES FACED

• Taipei being a coastal city the problems present are:

• Weak soil conditions (The structures tend to sink).

 • Typhoon winds (High lateral displacement tends to topple structures).

• Large potential earthquakes (Generates shear forces).

STRUCTURAL SYSTEM

• Braced core with belt trusses.

FOUNDATION

• The building is a pile through clay rich soil to bedrock 40 – 60 m below.

• The plies are topped by a foundation slab which is 3m thick at the edges

and up to 5m thick under the largest of columns.

• There are a total of 380 1.5m dia. Tower piles.

COLUMN SYSTEM
 Photos of Site during Construction

• Gravity loads are carried vertically by a variety of columns.

• Within the core, sixteen columns are located at the crossing points of four

lines of bracing in each direction.

• The columns are box sections constructed of steel plates, filled with

concrete for added strength as well as stiffness till the 62nd floor.
• On the perimeter, up to the 26th floor, each of the four building faces has

two ‘supercolumns,’ two ‘sub-super-columns,’ and two corner columns.

• Each face of the perimeter above the 26th floor has the two ‘super-columns’

continue upward.

• The ‘super-columns’ and ‘sub-super-columns’ are steel box sections, filled

with 10,000 psi (M70) high performance concrete on lower floors for

strength and stiffness up to the 62nd floor.

TYPICAL PLAN UP TO 26TH STOREY

 TYPICAL PLAN FROM 27TH TO 91ST STOREY

LATERAL LOADING SYSTEM

For additional core stiffness, the lowest floors from basement to the 8th floor

have concrete shear walls cast between core columns in addition to diagonal

braces.
• The most of the lateral loads will be resisted by a combination of braced

cores, cantilevers from the core to the perimeter, the super columns and the

Special moment resisting frame (SMRF).

• The cantilevers (horizontal trussed from the core to the perimeter) occur at

11 levels in the structure. 5 of them are double storey high and the rest

single storey.

• 16 of these members occur on each of such floors.

• The balance of perimeter framing is a sloping Special Moment Resisting

Frame (SMRF), a rigidly-connected grid of stiff beams and H shape columns

which follows the tower’s exterior wall slope down each 8 story module.

• At each setback level, gravity load is transferred to ‘super-columns’ through

a story-high diagonalized truss in the plane of the SMRF.

• Above the 26th floor, only two exterior super-columns continue to rise up to

the 91st floor, so the SMRF consists of 600 mm deep steel wide flange

beams and columns, with columns sized to be significantly stronger than

beams for stability in the event of beam yielding.

• Each 7-story of SMRF is carried by a story-high truss to transfer gravity and

cantilever forces to the super-columns, and to handle the greater story

stiffness of the core at cantilever floors.

FLOOR SLAB (STRUCTURAL DIAPHRAGMS)

• Slabs are composite in nature and are typically 13.5 cms thick.

CORE

• Within the core, sixteen columns are located at the crossing points of four
 lines of bracing in each direction.

Tune Damp Sysytems

• A TMD is a passive damping system, which consists of a spring, a viscous

damping device, and a secondary mass attached to the vibrating structure.

• By varying the characteristics of the TMD system, an opportunity is given to

control the vibration of the primary structure and to dissipate energy in the

viscous element of the TMD.

TMD USED IN TAIPEI 101

• The Taipei 101 uses a 800 ton TMD which occupy 5 of its upper floors (87 –

91).

• The ball is assembled on site in layers of 12.5-cm-thick steel plate. It is

welded to a steel cradle suspended from level 92 by 3” cables, in 4 sets of 2

each.

• Eight primary hydraulic pistons, each about 2 m long, grip the cradle to

dissipate dynamic energy as heat.

• A roughly 60-cm-dia pin projecting from the underside of the ball limits its

movement to about 1 m even during times of the strongest lateral forces.

• The 60m high spire at the top has 2 smaller ‘flat’ dampers to support it.
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