19-11-2012-SUMMARY OF E-CONFERENCE ON TALL BUILDING

Moderator- Prof. Dr.Swaminathan Krishnan High rise buildings have to be planned, designed, constructed, and maintained properly. He emphasized that even though alanysis can be carried out using available software tackling of the wind load and seismic loads by choosing right configuration of the buildings is very important. Also other aspects like DETAILING, TRANSPORTATION construction materials in and around the building during execution also need to be thought of.

Moderator- Prof. Dr.CVR.MURTHY. Dr.CVR.Murthy in his welcome address informed that Tall Buildings seek higher level of engineering and architecture services. In particular, the attention is focused for the first time on formalizing some of the important building construction items, like MEP, utilities, services, facades, false ceilings/floors, building physics, building services automation, and maintenance. He stated that India needs to strengthen three of its existing systems. 1.A strong technology base with (a)A Focused Research and Development on all aspects of Tall Buildings, especially Geotechnical and Geophysical Investigations, Wind Tunnel Studies, Structural Behaviour under near-field earthquake ground motions and strong wind actions, and MEP services and other utilities; (b)A Trained Manpower of Academics and Practioners (including Architects, Engineers and Contractors); (c) A Proven construction materials (especially new materials, - curves of high strength concrete, lateral inplane response of structural glazing) and technologies; and (d)A Code of Practice for Tall Building in India (which guides professionals on Geophysical and Geotechnical, Architectural, Structural, MEP, Fire and Constructional aspects); (2) A legally empowered body of regulators of Tall Buildings, with wings in every city and town interested in constructing Tall Buildings. Currently only Mumbai city has a Tall Building Committee, even though Tall Buildings are mushrooming across the country; and (3) A change in the mental approach to designing and constructing such buildings. For instance, the usual construction practice needs to be halted of starting construction without designing the building. Unless the planning and designing of Tall Building is completed, even approvals for construction should not be issued by local municipal bodies. He is interested to participate as one among us by sharing his knowledge with us. Dr.N.SUBRAMANIAN,:

I call him the GURU of sefi forum since he explained even a small post without any hesitation with what he learned. Dr.Subramanian in his welcome address stressed the importance of Building Tall buildings due to reasons stated in his address. He pointed out the growth of Tall buildings in India specially in Mumbai, Delhi, and Kolkata. He also pointed out that building Tall Buildings is not taking place in India but all over the world but at greater trend than India. Dr.N.S has pointed out maintenance of the buildings in additions to instrumentations of high raise buildings for the determination of wind/ EQ/ other loads is to be done in a few cases. I learnt that about 400 buildings in Singapore are instrumented- see the news item at the end. Has any building in India instrumented like that? He also narrated the instrumentation as being conducted in Singapore. MODERATOR Alpha Seth: As Madam Alpha seth in her welcoming mail has given some note as Econference protocol in which members are advised to restrict their posting to 2 in a single e mail. Also advised to exercise utmost civility while expressing your disagreement. Listed the various topics for discussions from a to v (22 topics) including subdivisions. Er.Suraj has listed ways and means to Accessing construction materials to higher floors by listing 21 items like pumping of RMC. Under Urbanisation of Metropolis Surrounding Areas-General DiscussionHigh Rise topic he again listed 42 points for the above. Siting Tall Buildings Considerations Once again Er.Suraj has suggested 17 valid notes for this topic. Er.P.K.Mallick has sought a clarification on the shuttering details for concreting of floor beams and slabs in highrise building subjected to sudden gust wind ? Er.Hemant Gor has attached a pdf file from CTBHU Committee on Seismic Design of Tall Buildingswww.ctbhu.org A KIND NOTE TO ALL WHO ATTACH OR ADD ANY MATERIALS SHOULD CHECK SO THAT THEY ARE NOT COPY RIGHTED ONE.

BJReddy also attached on document from CTBUH, which will basically explain "Criteria for the Defining and Measuring of Tall Buildings. Er.V.P. Agarwal ISHA CONSULTANTS (P) LTD NEW DELHI 110074 Has voiced his concern over the improvement in preparation of the drawings and careful checking of Building designs and detailed drawings. Informed about the shortage of trained manpower for checking and the errors involved by many CAD draftsmen. He also cautioned that due to the clients urgency or due to the pressure from others proper checking can not be carried out and need special care in SOIL INVESTIGATIONS AND TH REPORTS. Er.Suraj has again posted the Fire Water Provision For Tall Buildings topic for which he has summorised 20 notes. Er.JEET SINGH: Some of the points that come to his mind are listed below: 1) Terrorist/Blast attacks: In response to this Dr.N.Subramanian has sent the reply as : Reg. measures to mitigate the effects of Terrorist attacks on buildings. I wish to bring to your notice a nice booklet authored by Prof. Murty of IITK(now he is in IITM) on the above title and published by IITK and Gujarat State disaster Management Authority in 2007, which may be obtained from NICEE. Though it is not meant specifically for Tall buildings, the principles are same. You may also note that the detailing is similar to EQ design as the main aim is to prevent progressive collapse. Note also that this document is based on the extensive literature made available by FEMA(FEMA 426, 427,428,429 & 452). FEMA 426 may be downloaded from http://www.accem.org/pdf/mitigatebuildings.pdf For other FEMA documents visit: http://www.fema.gov/library/ A document titled Building Design for Homeland Security, is interesting as it familiarizes students with assessment methodologies available to identify the relative level of risk for various threats, including explosive blast and chemical, biological, or

radiological agents. The students will be introduced to publications FEMA 426 and FEMA 452 and will be asked to provide mitigation measures for a range of manmade hazards. The primary target audience for these courses includes engineers, architects, and building officials. A number of PPP slides explain the concepts. For Tsunami loads see the PPP at escweb.wr.usgs.gov/share/mooney/SriL.V6.ppt 2) Tsunami loads: 3) Seismic reoccurance: 3) Seismic reoccurance: He pointed out the importance of the above not only with respect to high rise buildings but also other types of buildings. Er. BMR has sought clarifications for the followings: What are the basic possible structural arrangements for tall structures in terms of location of shear walls? eg. core, peripherial, etc. and what should be the basic for the choice of arrangement? Is prestressed pre-tensioned better or post-tensioned. If pre tensioned is employed then please provide some reference for design & detailing of connections and are there any tolerance limits for the same? Response to the above Dr.N.S has given the explanations as: Location of shear walls should be at the extreme boundaries, so that we will get a good leaver arm for resisting the lateral loads, and hence the forces induced will be less. Many engineers adopt core walls, as it is easy to locate them around the stairs and lifts. Also such walls will have box configuration instead of the simple rectangular walls; hence provide much stability- However, much care should be exercised in designing the link beams around openings in the shear walls- Read the book by Smith & Coull, Tall Buildings Structures-Analysis and Design, Wiley, 1991, which still remains as an excellent book on this topic. Are you talking about pre-tensioned slabs in Tall buildings. Most of these slabs are executed by proprietary firms and you need to consult them. However visit the following sites, which may be useful: http://www.vsl.net/Portals/0/vsl_techreports/PT_Slabs.pdf

http://www.post-tensioning.org/pti_journal.php http://www.pci.org/publications/journal/index.cfm

Geotech Consultant Mr.Jaydeep Wagh : has sent his views as follows salient points are highlighted : SITING OF TALL BUILDINGS High rise buildings can generally be constructed almost any site with any subsurface conditions. However, certain difficult or complex subsurface conditions at some sites may render construction of high rise buildings impractical with respect to time and cost. These difficult subsurface conditions may include presence of competent strata at relatively deep depths (>60m) or due to presence of miscellaneous fill with boulders, which make it difficult for piling equipment to penetrate to competent strata. A comprehensive geotechnical engineering program combined with extensive geotechnical experience of high rise buildings is essential in arriving at safe and cost effective foundation design. GEOTECHNICAL INVESTIGATION PROGRAM: A complete geotechnical investigation program is an essential pre-requisite to arrive at design spring constants and/or foundation design of high rise buildings. A proper geotechnical investigation program may also help in significantly reducing foundation costs along with ensuring safe foundations. An universal detailed geotechnical investigation program cannot be prescribed for a high rise building site as it will obviously depend on the type of building, number of floors, number of basements (if any), and subsurface conditions. Typically, boreholes for a high rise building are spaced at every 25m to 30m and are extended to 1.5 times the width of foundation or 5m into relatively incompressible strata and atleast 5 times pile diameters in case of pile foundations. At a minimum SPT tests are generally conducted in soil and soft rock, while rock coring operations are conducted in hard rock. A detailed custom geotechnical program can be chalked out after initial boreholes are available and a foundation system type has been selected. Detailed tests including pressuremeter tests, plate load tests, or pile load tests can then be conducted. If local experience is available, a detailed geotechnical investigation program may be specified right from the beginning. However, it is prudent to still study initial borehole logs to see if any modification to the geotechnical investigation program is required.

PILED RAFT FOUNDATION : A piled raft foundation can be considered in lieu of a complete pile foundation, if relatively competent strata but not totally adequate, is encountered at raft founding level. The efficiency of a piled raft foundation would depend on the relative stiffness of the soil/rock at raft founding level in comparison to the soil/rock near pile tip level. It may be important to note that some degree of resistance is always provided by the soil/rock beneath the pile cap or the piled raft. However, the effort required in analyzing this available resistance may not be justified if the soils at pile cap/raft level are relatively much softer. A typical example of this is a building constructed in soft marine clay areas when the pile tip is extended to underlying hard rock. The contribution of a pile cap or raft portion of the piled raft in carrying loads may range from negligible (as mentioned above) to even 90% in some cases. Typical allowable deformations are generally governed by the permissible differential settlement of the structure. Differential settlements limits as specified in several country codes for raft foundations can also be applied to piled rafts. Typical permissible limits range from L/660 for spread foundations to L/400 for raft foundations. Some country codes also specify a permissible for total maximum deformations, for eg. 75mm in IS1904. A more aggressive form of piled raft design, which has become quite popular in recent times due to development of geotechnical finite element programs is settlement reducing piles. This specific application can be used where a conventional raft only foundation would have adequate factor of safety against shear failure, but cannot be utilized as it does not meet the permissible total/differential settlement criteria. Few piles are then added beneath the raft at strategic locations solely to reduce the total/differential settlements to within permissible limits. A pile load test is absolutely essential for design of a piled raft system. A pile load test not only provides ultimate pile capacity, but also provides the pattern of pile load v/s. pile settlement, which is essential in deformation analysis of a piled raft. Test pile should be conducted using same equipment and methods as for final working piles. Manual design methods can be utilized for geotechnical analysis of conventional buildings with relatively uniform loading patterns and uniform homogeneous typically single layer soil type. However, finite element softwares are often a must for high rise building piled raft analysis, and are also considered more accurate.

In response to Mr. Geotech Consultant Mr.Jaydeep Wagh Er. Suraj has put 22 notes regarding the Soil Investigation & Reporting . Er.drferozkottamal has posted the question for clarification. How to check safety against overturning, what should be the height aspect ratio, geometric proportioning... Er.R L DINESH: Has a doubt about the proposed of Tall building whether it will have effect on the adjacent structures due to wind. In response Dr.N.S has the following : IS 875 is very old, developed in 1987 and needs revision. Please visit the NICEE web site(http://www.nicee.org/IITK-GSDMA_Codes.php). Down load the documents Indian Code for Wind Loads IS: 875 (Part 3)

IS: 875(Part 3): Wind Loads on Buildings and Structures - Proposed Draft & Commentary Wind Storms, Damage and Guidelines for Mitigative Measures A Commentary on Indian Standard Code of practice for design loads (other than earthquake): For buildings and structures: Part 3 Wind Loads (Second Revision) An Explanatory Handbook on Proposed IS 875 (Part 3) Wind Loads on Buildings and Structures They discuss the provisions to consider wind interference effects. Similar clauses may be found in ASCE 7-2010.

A reply from Er. Sureshkumar_Kumaresan( I hope he is an expert in Wind Engg) is : (1) When new structures are coming nearby, the wind loads on the existing structures can increase/decrease depending on many factors such as the spacing between them, dimensions/geometry of the structures, oncoming turbulence, structural properties etc. Note that this influence will exist only for a few angles of attack and generally the built-in factor of safety will cover if any increase in loading. (2) In another sense, over the years the city is going to get build and then the crowded cities will essentially protect the new upcoming buildings from the full force wind. This means typically upcoming new structures may experience less load than a similar structure getting constructed now. Er.B.V.Harsoda, A Bronze Sponsor has attached 2 papers from

The 14th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering held on October 12-17, 2008, Beijing, China 1. Study of Structural RC Shear Wall System in a 56-Story RC Tall Building. 2. AMBIENT VIBRATION MEASUREMENT AND EARTHQUAKE RESISTANT BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS ON A TWOTOWER TALL BUILDING WITH ENLARGED BASE. The above papers can be downloaded from the links as appeared in his postings. In addition he has provided a YOUTUBE on Tall building design which can be viewed by pressing PLAY button. Er.u.mukesh has put the posting: How do we define tall buildings? For this Er. RangaRajan has given the link where he can find the definition for Tall buildings. http://www.sefindia.org/forum/viewtopic.phpt=13016&postdays=0&postorder=asc&sta rt=20 In addition Madam Alpa Sheth has given some more explanation regarding the Tall building definition in the context of Indian scenario as 70m, China as 28 m, IBC ~50m. After how many stories or height "Wind load" would be governing than "Earthquake load"? She clarified on the boundary limit of WIND and Seismic of Tall building. In this context she explained the drift limit of h/500 and h/250 for wind and seismic forces where h is the total height of the building. Prof.Swaminathan has raised the limit of minimum stiffness requirement for which Madam Alpa sheth has commented as: Typically, we seem to link stiffness with max allowable deformation under the design seismic loads of say h/500 and up to elastoplastic inter story limit of h/120 for shear walls (say h/100 or frame-shear walls and so on) under such loads. She raised the question to Prof.Swaminathan as my question is- should we have some other way of defining stiffness- either as you say ratio of area of the shear walls/vertical elements to total floor area or max fundamental period of a building with relation to its height or ....as in India she came across buildings with 220 to 230 m high have fundamental period of as high as 9 seconds. Er. Chinmayrshah has asked permission for presenting research project on Stability Aspects of Tall Commercial Buildings in Earthquake and Recent Practices".

Hope moderator can reply to this. Today: No.of posting: 23 No. of replies: 29 T.RangaRajan. E-Confer. Raconteur