Tallest Buildings
World's tallest building
World's tallest building - its not petronas anymore - Taipei Towers in Taiwan
The Taipei 101 Tower, Taiwan: The Tallest Building on Earth, made using Steel
The Taipei 101 Tower of Taiwan is the tallest building on Earth. Its height above ground is 509.2 m. This includes the 60 m spire; the building also holds the record for the highest roof (440 m).
The Taipei 101 Tower contains the world's fastest and most comfortable elevators. The building is thrilling to look at, an impressive tribute to steel, glass and incredibly clever engineering. And yet the design clearly reflects the local Chinese culture; for example, there are eight canted sections, eight 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 region where it is built straddles the Pacific Ring of Fire, an arc of fault lines that erupt in earthquakes every decade or so. There are also many typhoons in this region. There are therefore massive support columns and braces in place. Pairs of 2.46 by 3.1 m supercolumns on each face of the building work, together with 16 columns in the core form the vertical support structure.
The massive supporting pillars are made of boxes of 80 mm thick steel-plate, filled with concrete for stiffness. However, only steel is used above the 62nd floor. There are 16 of these giant columns to support the gravity-load. There are many lateral braces and moment-resisting frames around the building perimeter.
Wrapped around the supercolumns 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.
There is a dedicated mechanical floor every eight floors, with massive floor-high steel outrigger trusses. These connect the columns in the core to the supercolumns on the perimeter, effectively widening the building to help it resist overturning.
Given the strenuous geographical circumstances, the engineering and materials technologies involved in the construction of this supertower are remarkable. 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 microalloyed, thermomechanically 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 (Pcm was less than 0.29. The plates were produced using the TMCP process. Specially constructed steel processing plant are needed to manufacture such alloys.
In addition, the tower is supported by 380 concrete-filled steel piles, sunk into the soil to a depth of 80 m.
