Report on:

Design Aspects of Burj Khalifa

Rajiv Gandhi Proudyogiki

Vishwavidyalaya
CIVIL AND STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING
Subject: Seminar
Semester IX

By
- Rishabh Lala
Dual Degree Integrated
PG Program
0007CE11DD14

Contents
Introduction ........................................................................................................................................ 3
About .................................................................................................................................................. 3
Design Aspects of Burj Khalifa ............................................................................................................ 3
About Burj Khalifa: .................................................................................................................................. 4
Description of Structural Elements ......................................................................................................... 6
Foundation ...................................................................................................................................... 6
Podium ............................................................................................................................................ 6
Exterior Cladding ............................................................................................................................. 7
Structural System ............................................................................................................................ 7
Spire ................................................................................................................................................ 8
Mechanical Floors ........................................................................................................................... 8
Window Washing Bays.................................................................................................................... 9
Broadcast and Communications Floors .......................................................................................... 9
Mechanical, Electrical & Plumbing.................................................................................................. 9
Fire Safety ..................................................................................................................................... 10
Elevators & Lifts ............................................................................................................................ 10
Structural Model Description............................................................................................................ 11
Structural Analysis and Design Facts..................................................................................................... 12
Outrigger ............................................................................................................................................... 12
Analysis for Gravity ............................................................................................................................... 13
Site Test and Analysis ............................................................................................................................ 13
Wind Engineering .................................................................................................................................. 14
Construction Sequence Analysis Procedures ........................................................................................ 16
Compensation Methodology ................................................................................................................ 16
Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 17
References ........................................................................................................................................ 18

Report on:
Design Aspects of Burj Khalifa

Introduction:
The goal of burj Khalifa is not to be the Worlds Tallest but it incorporates Worlds
Highest Aspirations. The context of the Burj Dubai being located in the city of
Dubai, UAE, drove the inspiration for the building form to incorporate cultural,
historical, and organic influences particular to the region. It is an understatement to
say that Burj Khalifa represents the state-of-the-art in building design. From initial
concept through completion, a combination of several important technological
innovations and innovation structural design methods have resulted in a
superstructure that is both efficient and robust. This report presents the various
advanced structural designing concepts and aspects that were taken into account
during the preparation of Burj Khalifa.

The various aspects discussed in this report on Burj Khalifa are :

Description of Structural Elements like foundation, podium of Burj Khalifa,
Exterior Cladding, Structural System, Spire, Mechanical Floors, Window Washing Bays,
Fire Safety, Elevators and Lifts, etcetera. Discussion Further moves on to structural analysis
model, wind engineering aspects, earthquake provisions, construction stage analysis,
foundation, testing of cubes, etcetera.

About Burj Khalifa:

Excavation work began for Burj Khalifa the tallest skyscraper in the world in January 2004
and over the years, the building passed many important milestones to become the tallest manmade structure the world has ever seen. In just 1,325 days since excavation work started in
January, 2004, Burj Khalifa became the tallest free-standing structure in the world,
completing in May 2010.
The total heigh of Burj al Khalifa is 829.8 m. The 280,000 m2 (3,000,000 ft2) reinforced
concrete multi-use Burj Dubai tower is utilized for retail, a Giorgio Armani Hotel, residential
and office. As with all super-tall projects, difficult structural engineering problems needed to
be addressed and resolved.
The official arbiter of height is the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH)
founded at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and currently housed at the
Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, Illinois.
The CN Tower in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, was the world's tallest freestanding structure
from 1975 to 2007, although it arbitrated Burj Khalifa, a skyscraper in Dubai that reached
829.8 m (2,722 ft) in height on January 17, 2009, to be the tallest.
CTBUH recognizes a building only if at least fifty percent of
its height is made up of floor plates containing habitable floor area.
Structures that do not meet this criterion, such as the CN Tower, are now
defined as "towers".

Burj al Khalifa also known as Burj Dubai before its inauguration, is a megatall skyscraper in
Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Construction of Burj Khalifa began in 2004, with the exterior
completed in 2009. The primary structure is reinforced concrete. The building opened in
2010, as part of the new development called Downtown Dubai. It is designed to be the
centerpiece of large-scale, mixed-use development. The decision to build the building is
reportedly based on the government's decision to diversify from an oil-based economy, and
for Dubai to gain international recognition. The building was named in honor of the ruler of
Abu Dhabi and president of the United Arab Emirates, Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan; Abu
Dhabi and the UAE government lent Dubai money to pay its debts. The building broke
numerous height records.

The building was designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM), who also designed the
Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower) in Chicago and the new One World Trade Center in
New York City. Burj Khalifa uses the bundled tube design of the Willis Tower, invented by
Fazlur Rahman Khan.[37][38] Proportionally, the design uses half the amount of steel used in
the construction of the Empire State Building thanks to the tubular system.[37][39] Its design
is reminiscent of Frank Lloyd Wright's vision for The Illinois, a mile high skyscraper
designed for Chicago. According to Marshall Strabala, a SOM architect who worked on the
building's design team, Burj Khalifa was designed based on the 73 floor Tower Palace Three,
an all residential building in Seoul. In its early planning, Burj Khalifa was intended to be
entirely residential.

Description of Structural Elements

Foundation
The superstructure is supported by a large reinforced concrete mat, which is in turn supported
by bored reinforced concrete piles. The design was based on extensive geotechnical and
seismic studies. The mat is 3.7 meters thick, and was constructed in four separate pours
totaling 12,500 cubic meters of concrete. The 1.5 meter diameter x 43 meter long piles
represent the largest and longest piles conventionally available in the region. A high density,
low permeability concrete was used in the foundations, as well as a cathodic protection
system under the mat, to minimize any detrimental effects form corrosive chemicals in local
ground water.

Figure: Cathodic protection Below Mat

Podium
The podium provides a base anchoring the tower to the ground, allowing on grade access
from three different sides to three different levels of the building. Fully glazed entry pavilions
constructed with a suspended cable-net structure provide separate entries for the Corporate
Suites at B1 and Concourse Levels, the Burj Khalifa residences at Ground Level and the
Armani Hotel at Level 1.

Exterior Cladding
The exterior cladding is comprised of reflective glazing with aluminum and textured stainless
steel spandrel panels and stainless steel vertical tubular fins. Close to 26,000 glass panels,
each individually hand-cut, were used in the exterior cladding of Burj Khalifa. Over 300
cladding specialists from China were brought in for the cladding work on the tower. The
cladding system is designed to withstand Dubai's extreme summer heat, and to further ensure
its integrity, a World War II airplane engine was used for dynamic wind and water testing.
The curtain wall of Burj Khalifa is equivalent to 17 football (soccer) fields or 25 American
football fields.

Figure1: Exterior Cladding

Structural System
In addition to its aesthetic and functional advantages, the spiraling Y shaped plan was
utilized to shape the structural core of Burj Khalifa. This design helps to reduce the wind
forces on the tower, as well as to keep the structure simple and foster constructability. The
structural system can be described as a buttressed core, and consists of high performance
concrete wall construction. Each of the wings buttress the others via a six-sided central core,
or hexagonal hub. This central core provides the torsional resistance of the structure, similar
to a closed pipe or axle. Corridor walls extend from the central core to near the end of each
wing, terminating in thickened hammer head walls. These corridor walls and hammerhead
walls behave similar to the webs and flanges of a beam to resist the wind shears and
moments. Perimeter columns and flat plate floor construction complete the system. At
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mechanical floors, outrigger walls are provided to link the perimeter columns to the interior
wall system, allowing the perimeter columns to participate in the lateral load resistance of the
structure; hence, all of the vertical concrete is utilized to support both gravity and lateral
loads. The result is a tower that is extremely stiff laterally and torsionally. It is also a very
efficient structure in that the gravity load resisting system has been utilized so as to maximize
its use in resisting lateral loads.

As the building spirals in height, the wings set back to provide many different floor plates.
The setbacks are organized with the towers grid, such that the building stepping is
accomplished by aligning columns above with walls below to provide a smooth load path. As
such, the tower does not contain any structural transfers. These setbacks also have the
advantage of providing a different width to the tower for each differing floor plate. This
stepping and shaping of the tower has the effect of confusing the wind: wind vortices never
get organized over the height of the building because at each new tier the wind encounters a
different building shape.

Spire
The crowning touch of Burj Khalifa is its telescopic spire comprised of more than 4,000 tons
of structural steel. The spire was constructed from inside the building and jacked to its full
height of over 200 metres (700 feet) using a hydraulic pump. In addition to securing Burj
Khalifa's place as the world's tallest structure, the spire is integral to the overall design,
creating a sense of completion for the landmark. The spire also houses communications
equipment.

Mechanical Floors
Seven double-storey height mechanical floors house the equipment that bring Burj Khalifa to
life. Distributed around every 30 storeys, the mechanical floors house the electrical substations, water tanks and pumps, air-handling units etc, that are essential for the operation of
the tower and the comfort of its occupants.

Window Washing Bays

Access for the tower's exterior for both window washing and faade maintenance is provided
by 18 permanently installed track and fixed telescopic, cradle equipped, building
maintenance units. The track mounted units are stored in garages, within the structure, and
are not visible when not in use. The manned cradles are capable of accessing the entire facade
from tower top down to level seven. The building maintenance units jib arms, has a
maximum reach of 36 meters with an overall length of approximately 45 meters. The jib arm
length measure approximately 15 meters. Under normal conditions, with all building
maintenance units in operation, it takes three to four months to clean the entire exterior
facade.

Broadcast and Communications Floors

The top four floors have been reserved for communications and broadcasting. These floors
occupy the levels just below the spire.

Mechanical, Electrical & Plumbing

To achieve the greatest efficiencies, the mechanical, electrical and plumbing services for Burj
Khalifa were developed in coordination during the design phase with cooperation of the
architect, structural engineer and other consultant.
The tower's water system supplies an average of 946,000 litres (250,000 gallons) of water
daily. At peak cooling, Burj Khalifa requires about 10,000 tons of cooling, equal to the
cooling capacity provided by about 10,000 tons of melting ice Dubai's hot, humid climate
combined with the building's cooling requirements creates a significant amount of
condensation. This water is collected and drained in a separate piping system to a holding
tank in the basement car park The condensate collection system provides about 15 million
gallons of supplement water per year, equal to about 20 Olympic-sized swimming pools. The
tower's peak electrical demand is 36mW, equal to about 360,000 100 Watt bulbs operating
simultaneously.

Fire Safety
Fire safety and speed of evacuation were prime factors in the design of Burj Khalifa.
Concrete surrounds all stairwells and the building service and fireman's elevator have a
capacity of 5,500 kg and is the world's tallest service elevator. Since people can't reasonably
be expected to walk down 160 floors, there are pressurized, air-conditioned refuge areas
located approximately every 25 floors.

Elevators & Lifts

Burj Khalifa is 57 elevators and 8 escalators. The building service/fireman's elevator has a
capacity of 5,500 kg and is the world's tallest service elevator.

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Structural Model Description

3D Structural Analysis Model of Burj Dubai TowerBurj Khalifa has "refuge floors" at 25 to
30 story intervals that are more fire resistant and have separate air supplies in case of
emergency. Its reinforced concrete structure makes it stronger than steel-frame skyscrapers.

Designers purposely shaped the structural concrete Burj Dubai - "Y" shaped in plan - to
reduce the wind forces on the tower, as well as to keep the structure simple and foster
constructibility. The structural system can be described as a "buttressed" core (Figures 1, 2
and 3). Each wing, has its own high performance concrete corridor walls and perimeter
columns, buttresses the others via a six-sided central core, or hexagonal hub. The result is a
tower that is extremely stiff laterally and torsionally. SOM applied a rigorous geometry to
the tower that aligned all the common central core, wall, and column elements.
Each tier of the building sets back in a spiral stepping pattern up the building. The
setbacks are organized with the Tower's grid, such that the building stepping is
accomplished by aligning columns above with walls below to provide a smooth load path.
This allows the construction to proceed without the normal difficulties associated with
column transfers.
The setbacks are organized such that the Tower's width changes at each setback. The
advantage of the stepping and shaping is to "confuse the wind'1. The wind vortices never
get organized because at each new tier the wind encounters a different building shape. The
Khalifa's Tower and Podium structures are currently under construction (Figure 3) and the
project is scheduled for topping out in 2008.

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Structural Analysis and Design Facts

The center hexagonal reinforced concrete core walls provide the torsional resistance of the
structure similar to a closed tube or axle. The center hexagonal walls are buttressed by the
wing walls and hammer head walls which behave as the webs and flanges of a beam to resist
the wind shears and moments.
Outriggers at the mechanical floors allow the columns to participate in the lateral load
resistance of the structure; hence, all of the vertical concrete is utilized to support both gravity
and lateral loads. The wall concrete specified strengths ranged from C80 to C60 cube strength
and utilized Portland cement and fly ash.
Local aggregates were utilized for the concrete mix design. The C80 concrete for the lower
portion of the structure had a specified Young's Elastic Modulus of 43,800 N/mm2 (6,350ksi)
at 90 days. The wall and column sizes were optimized using virtual work .' La Grange
multiplier methodology which results in a very efficient structure (Baker et ah, 2000).The
reinforced concrete structure was designed in accordance with the requirements of ACI 31802 Building Code Requirements for Structural Concrete.
The wall thicknesses and column sizes were fine-tuned to reduce the effects of creep and
shrinkage on the individual elements which compose the structure. To reduce the effects of
differential column shortening, due to creep, between the perimeter columns and interior
walls, the perimeter columns were sized such that the self-weight gravity stress on the
perimeter columns matched the stress on the interior corridor walls.

Outrigger
The five (5) sets of outriggers, distributed up the building, tie all the vertical load carrying
elements together, further ensuring uniform gravity stresses: hence, reducing differential
creep movements. Since the shrinkage in concrete occurs more quickly in thinner walls or
columns, the perimeter column thickness of 600mm (24") matched the typical corridor wall
thickness (similar volume to surface ratios) (Figure 5) to ensure the columns and walls
generally shorten at the same rate due to concrete shrinkage.
The top section of the Tower consists of a structural steel spire utilizing a diagonally braced
lateral system. The structural steel spire was designed for gravity, wind, seismic and fatigue
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in accordance with the requirements of AISC Load and Resistance Factor Design
Specification for Structural Steel Buildings (1999). The exterior exposed steel is protected
with a flame applied aluminum finish.

Analysis for Gravity

The structure was analyzed for gravity (including P-Delta analysis), wind, and seismic
loadings by ETABS version 8.4 (Figure 6). The three-dimensional analysis model consisted
of the reinforced concrete walls, link beams, slabs, raft, piles, and the spire structural steel
system. The full 3D analysis model
consisted of over 73,500 shells and
75,000 nodes. Under lateral wind
loading, the building deflections are
well below commonly used criteria.
The dynamic analysis indicated the first
mode is lateral side sway with a period
of 11.3 seconds (Figure 7). The second
mode is a perpendicular lateral side sway with a period of 10.2 seconds. Torsion is the fifth
mode with a period of 4.3 seconds

Site Test and Analysis

The Dubai Municipality (DM) specifies Dubai as a UBC97 Zone 2a seismic region (with a
seismic zone facior Z = 0.15 and soil profile Sc). The seismic analysis consisted of a site
specific response spectra analysis. Seismic loading typically did not govern the design of the
reinforced concrete Tower structure. Seismic loading did govern the design of the reinforced
concrete Podium buildings and the Tower structural steel spire.
Dr. Max Irvine (with Structural Mechanics & Dynamics
Consulting Engineers located in Sydney Australia)
developed site specific seismic reports for the project
including a seismic hazard analysis. The potential for

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liquefaction was investigated based on several accepted methods; it was determined that
liquefaction is not considered to have any structural implications for the deep seated Tower
foundations.
In addition to the standard cube tests, the raft concrete was field tested prior to placement by
flow table (Figure 10). L-box, V-Box and temperature.

Wind Engineering
For a building of this height and slenderness,
wind forces and the resulting motions in the
upper levels become dominant factors in the
structural design. An extensive program of
wind tunnel tests and other studies were
undertaken under the direction of Dr. Peter
Irwin of Rowan Williams Davies and Irwin
Inc.'s (RWD1) boundary* layer wind tunnels
in Guelph. Ontario (Figure 14).
The wind tunnel program included rigid-model force balance tests, a foil multi degree of
freedom aero elastic model studies, measurements of localized pressures, pedestrian wind
environment studies and wind climatic studies. Wind tunnel models account for the cross
wind effects of wind induced vortex shedding on the building. The aeroelastic and force
balance studies used models mostly at 1:500 scale. The RWDI wind engineering was peer
reviewed by Dr. Nick Isyumov of the University of Western Ontario Boundary Layer Wind
Tunnel Laboratory.
Burj Khalifa is the first mega-high rise in which certain elevators are programmed to permit
controlled evacuation for certain fire or security events. Burj Khalifa's Observatory elevators
are double deck cabs with a capacity for 12-14 people per cab. Traveling at 10 metres per
second, they have the world's longest travel distance from lowest to highest stop.
To determine the wind loading on the main structure wind tunnel tests were undertaken early
in the design using the high-frequency-force-balance technique. The wind tunnel data were
then combined with the dynamic properties of the tower in order to compute the

14

towers dynamic response and the overall effective wind force distributions at full scale. For
the Burj Dubai the results of the force balance tests were used as early input for the structural
design and detailed shape of the Tower and allowed parametric studies to be undertaken on
the effects of varying the towers stiffness and mass distribution.
The building has essentially six important wind directions. The principal wind directions are
when the wind is blowing into the nose / cutwater of each of the three wings (Nose A,
Nose B and Nose C). The other three directions are when the wind blows in between two
wings, termed as the tail directions (Tail A, Tail B and Tail C). It was noticed that the force
spectra for different wind directions showed less excitation in the important frequency range
for winds impacting the pointed or nose end of a wing (Figure 15) than from the opposite
direction (tail). This was kept in mind when selecting the orientation of the tower relative to
the most frequent strong wind directions for Dubai and the direction of the set backs.

15

Construction Sequence Analysis Procedures

The time-dependant effects of creep, shrinkage, the variation of concrete stiffness with time,
sequential loading and foundation settlement were accounted for by analyzing 15 separate
three-dimensional finite-element
analysis models, each representing a discrete time during construction (Figure 18). At each
point in time, for each model, only the incremental loads occurring in that
particular time-step were applied. Additional time steps,after construction, were analyzed up
to 50 years. The structural responses occurring at each time-step were stored and combined in
a database to allow studying the predicted time-dependant response of the structure.
Long-term creep and shrinkage testing, over one year in duration, have been performed, by
the CTL Group (located in Skokie, IL) under contract with Samsung, on concrete specimens
to better understand the actual behavior of the concrete utilized for the project.

Compensation Methodology
The tower is being constructed utilizing both a vertical and horizontal compensation program.
For vertical compensation, each story is being constructed incorporating a modest increase in
the typical floor-to-floor height. This vertical compensation was selected to ensure the actual
height of the structure, after the time-dependant shortening effects of creep and shrinkage,
will be greater than the as-designed final height.
For horizontal compensation, the building is being re-centered with each successive center
hex core jump. The re-centering compensation will correct for gravity induced sidesway
effects (elastic, differential foundation settlement, creep and shrinkage) which occur up to the
casting of each story.
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Conclusion

The most pulchritudinous Burj Khalifa, the tallest building

of the world is made of advanced structural designing
provisions, calculations and thinking.

This inspires budding structural engineers to consider the

aforementioned aspects into structural other structural
designs as well and remain updated with the latest and
most advanced edifice technologies.

17

References
[1] William F. Baker, D. Stanton Korista, and Lawrence C. Novak; Engineering the
Worlds Tallest Burj Dubai, Partner with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP, Director of
Structural/Civil Engineering with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP, Director of Engineered
Buildings with the Portland Cement Association
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/
[3] http://www.aboutcivil.org/
[4] http://www.burjkhalifa.ae/
[5] http://www.som.com/
[6] Joji Methew, Presentation, Burj khalifa-mode of construction

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