Study on seismic behavior of Shanghai World Financial Center Tower

The 101-storey Shanghai World Financial Center is 492m above ground and its aspect ratio of height to width is 8.49,which makes it possible to be the tallest building in the world when completed.The overall height and the aspect ratio clearly exceed the limits stipulated by Chinese technical specifications for concrete structures of tall building(JGJ3—2002).A scaled model was made and tested on shaking table to study its dynamic characteristics and seismic responses under various seismic actions from frequent to rare earthquake levels.A 3D finite element analysis was conducted to evaluate the structural seismic performance.The comparisons between the analytical and experimental results showed that the natural frequencies remained almost constant demonstrating an elastic behavior of the structure until basic earthquake of intensity 7.Under rare earthquake of intensity 7,natural frequencies decrease to some extent.Corresponding to rare earthquake of intensity 8,concrete crush occurrs but no collapse happens to the model.The maximum inter-story drifts under different earthquake levels are smaller than the allowable limits stipulated in Chinese code.Conclusion can be drawn that the structure can meet the requirements of no damage under frequent earthquake,repairable damages under basic earthquake and no collapse under rare earthquake.