• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.1 no.4
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• pp.311-332
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• 2012

Earthquake response of mid-rise to high-rise buildings provided with friction dampers is investigated. The steel buildings are modelled as shear-type structures and the investigation involved modelling of the structures of varying heights ranging from five storeys to twenty storeys, in steps of five storeys, subjected to real earthquake ground motions. Three basic types of structures considered in the study are: moment resisting frame (MRF), braced frame (BF), and friction damper frame (FDF). Mathematical modelling of the friction dampers involved simulation of the two distinct phases namely, the stick phase and the slip phase. Dynamic time history analyses are carried out to study the variation of the top floor acceleration, top floor displacement, storey shear, and base-shear. Further, energy plots are obtained to investigate the energy dissipation by the friction dampers. It is seen that substantial earthquake response reduction is achieved with the provision of the friction dampers in the mid-rise and high-rise buildings. The provision of the friction dampers always reduces the base-shear. It is also seen from the fast Fourier transform (FFT) of the top floor acceleration that there is substantial reduction in the peak response; however, the higher frequency content in the response has increased. For the structures considered, the top floor displacements are lesser in the FDF than in the MRF; however, the top floor displacements are marginally larger in the FDF than in the BF.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.171-180
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• 2015

A shaking table test was conducted at the E-Defense shaking table facility to investigate the damage and collapse behavior of a steel high-rise building under exceedingly large ground motions. The specimen is a one-third scale 18-story steel moment frame designed and constructed according to design specifications and practices used in the 1980s and 1990s. The shaking table tests used a long-duration, long-period ground motion simulated for a sequential Tokai, Nankai, and Nankai earthquake scenario. The building specimen was subjected to a series of progressively increasing scaled motions until it completely collapsed. The damage to the steel frame began through the yielding of beams along lower stories and column bases of the first story. After several excitations by increasing scaled motions, cracks initiated at the welded moment connections and fractures in the beam flanges spread to the lower stories. As the shear strength of each story decreased, the drifts of lower stories increased and the frame finally collapsed and settled on the supporting frame. From the test, a typical progression of collapse for a tall steel moment frame was obtained, and the hysteretic behavior of steel structural members including deterioration due to local buckling and fracture were observed. The results provide important information for further understanding and an accurate numerical simulation of collapse behavior.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.155-165
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• 2014

This study measured and compared the variation of ventilation rate and fan energy consumption according to various control strategies after installing wireless sensor-based pilot ventilation system in order to verify the applicability of demand-controlled ventilation (DCV) strategy that was efficient ventilation control strategy for underground parking lot. The underground parking lot pilot ventilation system controlled the ventilation rate by directly or indirectly tracking the traffic load in real-time after sensing data, using vehicle detection sensors and carbon monoxide (CO) and carbon dioxide ($CO_2$) sensor. The ventilation system has operated for 9 hours per a day. It responded real-time data every 10 minutes, providing ventilation rate in conformance with the input traffic load or contaminant level at that time. A ventilation rate of pilot ventilation system can be controlled at 8 levels. The reason is that a ventilation unit consists of 8 high-speed nozzle jet fans. This study proposed vehicle detection sensor based demand-controlled ventilation (VDS-DCV) strategy that would accurately trace direct traffic load and CO sensor based demand-controlled ventilation (CO-DCV) strategy that would indirectly estimate traffic load through the concentration of contaminants. In order to apply DCV strategy based on real-time traffic load, the minimum required ventilation rate per a single vehicle was applied. It was derived through the design ventilation rate and total parking capacity in the underground parking lot. This is because current ventilation standard established per unit floor area or unit volume of the space made it difficult to apply DCV strategy according to the real-time variation of traffic load. According to the results in this study, two DCV strategies in the underground parking lot are considered to be a good alternative approach that satisfies both energy saving and healthy indoor environment in comparison with the conventional control strategies.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.99-106
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• 2014

This paper presents the determination of the structural system of the Changsha IFC T1 tower with 452 m in architectural height and 440.45 m in structural height. Sensitivity analyses are carried out by varying the location of belt trusses and outriggers. The enhancement of seismic capacity of the outer frame by reasonably adjusting the column size is confirmed based on parametric studies. The results from construction simulation including the non-load effect of structures demonstrate that the deformation of vertical members has little effect on the load-bearing capacity of belt trusses and outriggers. The elastoplastic time-history analysis shows that the overall structure under rare earthquake load remains in an elastic state. The influence of the frame shear ratio and frame overturning moment ratio on the proposed model and equivalent mega column model is investigated. It is found that the frame overturning moment ratio is more applicable for judging the resistance of the outer frame against lateral loads. Comparison is made on the variation of these two effects between a classical frame-core tube-outrigger structure and a structure with diagonal braces between super columns under rare earthquakes. The results indicate that plasticity development of the top core cube of the braced structure may be significantly improved.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.177-183
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• 2019

This paper describes the structural design of a 212 m tall building currently under construction in the Tokiwabashi District Redevelopment Project facing Tokyo Station. In this project there was a requirement to rationally solve many issues arising from the conditions of the redevelopment project. In particular, the following two points were considered to be important from the point of view of structural design. 1) To provide an overhang frame with the perimeter columns on the lower stories inclined, in order to enable a typical floor area that greatly exceeded the limitations of the underground structure shape. 2) To provide high grade seismic performance for the office buildings to be constructed on prime city center land. LSCVCS (Lower Stories Concentrated Vibration Control System) was proposed as the method of rationally designing the overhang frame, which is an extremely disadvantageous element in the structural scheme of the tall building with a large slenderness ratio. LSCVCS is a system to provide effective damping by arranging vibration control devices in a concentrated manner in a lower story with large story height, that produces large deformation in an earthquake. Also, the vibration control devices arranged in the lower story are limited to viscous devices, to take into consideration the residual deformation of the overhang frame after an earthquake. The results of investigations into the specific effects of the system for the seismic design are reported, including Performance-based seismic design.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.323-334
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• 2021

Concrete structures may rarely collapse in fire incidents but fire induced damage to structural members is inevitable as a result of material degradation and thermal expansion. This requires certain repairing measures to be applied to restore the performance of post-fire members. A brief review on investigation of post-fire damage of concrete material and concrete structural members is presented in this paper, followed by a review of post-fire repair research regarding various types of repairing techniques (FRP, steel plate, and concrete section enlargement) and different type of structural members including columns, beams, and slabs. Particularly, the fire scenarios adopted in these studies leading to damage are categorized as three levels according to the duration of gas-phase temperature above 600℃ (t₆₀₀). The repair effectiveness in terms of recovered performance of concrete structural members compared to the initial undamaged performance has been summarized and compared regarding the repairing techniques and fire intensity levels. The complied results have shown that recovering the ultimate strength is achievable but the stiffness recovery is difficult. Moreover, the current fire loading scenarios adopted in the post-fire repair research are mostly idealized as constant heating rates or standard fire curves, which may have produced unrealistic fire damage patterns and the associated repairing techniques may be not practical. For future studies, the realistic fire impact and the system-level structural damage investigation are necessary.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.265-283
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• 2021

To ensure that fire induced collapse of a building is prevented it is important to understand the sequence of events that can lead to this event. In this paper, the initiation of collapse mechanisms of generic a multi-storey steel frame subjected to vertical and horizontal travelling fires are analysed computationally by tracking the formation of plastic hinges in the frame and generation of fire induced loads. Both uniform and travelling fires are considered. In total 58 different cases are analysed using finite element software LS-DYNA. For the frame examined with a simple and generic structural arrangement and higher applied fire protection to the columns, the results indicate that collapse mechanisms for singe floor and multiple floor fires can be each split into two main groups. For single floor fires (taking place in the upper floors of the frame (Group S1)), collapse is initiated by the pull-in of external columns when heated beams in end bays go into catenary action. For single floor fires occurring on the lower floors(Group S2), failure is initiated (i.e. ultimate strain of the material is exceeded) after the local beam collapse. Failure in both groups for single floor fires is governed by the generation of high loads due to restrained thermal expansion and the loss of material strength. For multiple floor fires with a low number of fire floors (1 to 3) - Group M1, failure is dominated by the loss of material strength and collapse is mainly initiated by the pull-in of external columns. For the cases with a larger number of fire floors (5 to 10) - Group M2, failure is dominated by thermal expansion and collapse is mainly initiated by swaying of the frame to the side of fire origin. The results show that for the investigated frame initiation of collapse mechanisms are affected by the fire type, the number of fire floors, and the location of the fire floor. The findings of this study could be of use to designers of buildings when developing fire protection strategies for steel framed buildings where the potential for a multifloor fire exists.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.375-387
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• 2018

This paper presents a review on progressive collapse mechanism of steel framed buildings exposed to fire. The influence of load ratios, strength of structural members (beam, column, slab, connection), fire scenarios, bracing systems, fire protections on the collapse mode and collapse time of structures is comprehensively reviewed. It is found that the key influencing factors include load ratio, fire scenario, bracing layout and fire protection. The application of strong beams, high load ratios, multi-compartment fires will lead to global downward collapse which is undesirable. The catenary action in beams and tensile membrane action in slabs contribute to the enhancement of structural collapse resistance, leading to a ductile collapse mechanism. It is recommended to increase the reinforcement ratio in the sagging and hogging region of slabs to not only enhance the tensile membrane action in the slab, but to prevent the failure of beam-to-column connections. It is also found that a frame may collapse in the cooling phase of compartment fires or under travelling fires. This is because that the steel members may experience maximum temperatures and maximum displacements under these two fire scenarios. An edge bay fire is more prone to induce the collapse of structures than a central bay fire. The progressive collapse of buildings can be effectively prevented by using bracing systems and fire protections. A combination of horizontal and vertical bracing systems as well as increasing the strength and stiffness of bracing members is recommended to enhance the collapse resistance. A protected frame dose not collapse immediately after the local failure but experiences a relatively long withstanding period of at least 60 mins. It is suggested to use three-dimensional models for accurate predictions of whether, when and how a structure collapses under various fire scenarios.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.107-116
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• 2019

The use of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is becoming an increasingly popular means to model wind flows in and around buildings. The first published application of CFD to both indoor and outdoor building airflows was in the 1970's. Since then, CFD usage has expanded to include different aspects of building design. Wind tunnel testing (WTT) on buildings for wind loads goes back as far as 1908. Gustave Eiffel built a pair of wind tunnels in 1908 and 1912. Using these he published wind loads on an aircraft hangar in 1919 as cited in Hoerner (1965 - page 74). The second of these wind tunnels is still in use today for tests including building design ($Damljanovi{\acute{c}}$, 2012). The Empire State Building was tested in 1933 in smooth flow - see Baskaran (1993). The World Trade Center Twin Towers in New York City were wind tunnel tested in the mid-sixties for both wind loads, at Colorado State University (CSU) and the [US] National Physical Laboratory (NPL), as well as pedestrian level winds (PLW) at the University of Western Ontario (UWO) - Baskaran (1993). Since then, the understanding of the planetary boundary layer, recognition of the structures of turbulent wakes, instrumentation, methodologies and analysis have been continuously refined. There is a drive to replace WTT with computational methods, with the rationale that CFD is quicker, less expensive and gives more information and control to the architects. However, there is little information available to building owners and architects on the limitations of CFD for flows around buildings and communities. Hence building owners, developers, engineers and architects are not aware of the risks they incur by using CFD for different studies, traditionally conducted using wind tunnels. This paper will explain what needs to happen for CFD to replace wind tunnels. Ultimately, we anticipate the reader will come to the same conclusion that we have drawn: both WTT and CFD will continue to play important roles in building and infrastructure design. The most pressing challenge for the design and engineering community is to understand the strengths and limitations of each tool so that they can leverage and exploit the benefits that each offers while adhering to our moral and professional obligation to hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.101-106
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• 2019

Assessing the energy performance of supertall buildings often does not consider variations in energy consumption due to the change of environmental conditions such as temperature, pressure, and wind speed associated with differing elevations. Some modelers account for these changing conditions by using a conventional temperature lapse rate, but not many studies confirm to the appropriateness of applying it to tall buildings. This paper presents and discusses simulated annual energy consumption results from a 600 m tall skyscraper floor plate located in Dubai, UAE, assessed using ground level weather data, a conventional temperature lapse rate of $6.5^{\circ}C/km$, and more accurate simulated 600 m weather data. A typical office floorplate, with ASHRAE 90.1-2010 standards and systems applied, was evaluated using the EnergyPlus engine through the OpenStudio graphical user interface. The results presented in this paper indicate that by using ground level weather data, energy consumption at the top of the building can be overestimated by upwards of 4%. Furthermore, by only using a lapse rate, heating energy is overestimated by up to 96% due to local weather phenomenon such as temperature inversion, which can only be conveyed using simulated weather data. In addition, sizing and energy consumption of fans, which are dependent both on wind and atmospheric pressure, are not accurately captured using a temperature lapse rate. These results show that that it is important, with the ever increasing construction of supertall buildings, to be able to account for variations in climatic conditions along the height of the building. Adequately modeling these conditions using simulated weather data will help designers and engineers correctly size mechanical systems, potentially decreasing overall building energy consumption, and ensuring that these systems are able to provide the necessary indoor conditions to maintain occupant comfort levels.