Shanghai World Financial Center
Shanghai World Financial Center
Shanghai World Financial Center
The Mega-Structure
The Mega-Structure concept is shown in Figures (both Figures omit intermediate floors). To
resist the forces from typhoon (hurricane) winds and earthquakes, three parallel and
interacting structural systems were incorporated:
1) The mega-structure, consisting of the major structural columns, the major diagonals,
and the belt trusses.
2) The concrete walls of the services core.
3) The interaction between the concrete walls of the services core and the mega-columns,
as created by the outrigger trusses.
Seeking to improve the quality of the office spaces, on each of the four orthogonal faces, the
new structural system decreases the perimeter framing from seventeen wide columns to just
three narrow columns. Hence, building occupants will be provided an extraordinary sense of
openness and unparalleled views of the surrounding city of Shanghai.
By adjusting the stiffness of the perimeter mega-structure and the outrigger trusses, both the
shears and the overturning moments resisted by the concrete walls of the services core can be
either increased or decreased. In this way, the weight of the services core is subject to control
by the structural engineer. The design both controlled the thickness of the services core
concrete walls and optimized the design of the outrigger trusses.
Tall Building Stuctures Technical Report Pere Pau Garau, ID:1237102
Turning more to the engineering detail, the diagonals of the mega-structure are formed of
welded boxes of structural steel. These steel boxes are in-filled with concrete, thus providing
increased stiffness, non-linear structural behavior, and structural damping. As well, in the
upper reaches of the building and enhanced with stud shear connectors, the concrete is used
to stabilize against buckling the thin steel plates of the diagonals.
Concluding thoughts
Recognizing that there are two basic materials (reinforced concrete and structural steel),
adding considerations of the speed of construction, and recognizing that structural detail is
perhaps more important than are structural quantities, the optimization of this structure relies
in part on experience and in part on judgment. The determination of the proper distributions
of lateral shear and overturning moment between these three parallel systems, then, is not
subject to precise analysis.