– How come the base of tall buildings don’t pulverize under the weight of the building?

755 views

Take for example the Taipei 101 Tower:

– 508.2 meters high
– Weighs 700,000 tons
– Ground floor is 57×63.5 meters, which is 3619.5 m²
– That means an area of 3619.5m² has to hold up 700.000 tons, which is ~193 tons per m² which is 193.000 kilograms per m²

I don’t know but 193.000 kilograms feels like an unbearable crushing all-pulverizing weight to me.

Obviously it works since the Taipei 101 tower and other huge buildings exist, but intuitively I don’t understand how the bases of large and tall buildings don’t instantly pulverize under the weight of everything above it.

In: 1790

22 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Because the final destination of the load transfers would not be on the “ground floor” as if you visualize the very wide ground floor slab at the lowest floor holding all of the loads from above. But most of the load will be transfered to the very deep foundation piles (from what I can gather, there are 380 piles in total, each with 1,5 meter IN DIAMETER, with around 80 METER LONG EACH, inside the ground until they all hit the sandstone layer of earth/”the rigid layer”). Then, the piles will transfer those loads into the earth. All of those 380 piles, each of them can hold 1100-1450 tons of load.

https://structures-explained.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Slide7-1-1024×576.jpg
https://image.slidesharecdn.com/projecttaipae101-140828105356-phpapp01/85/project-taipei-101-11-320.jpg?cb=1667418037

You are viewing 1 out of 22 answers, click here to view all answers.