Validating the Structural Behavior and Response of Burj Khalifa: Synopsis of the Full Scale Structural Health Monitoring Programs

New generation of tall and complex buildings systems are now introduced that are reflective of the latest development in materials, design, sustainability, construction, and IT technologies. While the complexity in design is being overcome by the availability and advances in structural analysis tools and readily advanced software, the design of these buildings are still reliant on minimum code requirements that yet to be validated in full scale. The involvement of the author in the design and construction planning of Burj Khalifa since its inception until its completion prompted the author to conceptually develop an extensive survey and real-time structural health monitoring program to validate all the fundamental assumptions mad for the design and construction planning of the tower. The Burj Khalifa Project is the tallest structure ever built by man; the tower is 828 meters tall and comprises of 162 floors above grade and 3 basement levels. Early integration of aerodynamic shaping and wind engineering played a major role in the architectural massing and design of this multi-use tower, where mitigating and taming the dynamic wind effects was one of the most important design criteria established at the onset of the project design. Understanding the structural and foundation system behaviors of the tower are the key fundamental drivers for the development and execution of a state-of-the-art survey and structural health monitoring (SHM) programs. Therefore, the focus of this paper is to discuss the execution of the survey and real-time structural health monitoring programs to confirm the structural behavioral response of the tower during construction stage and during its service life; the monitoring programs included 1) monitoring the tower's foundation system, 2) monitoring the foundation settlement, 3) measuring the strains of the tower vertical elements, 4) measuring the wall and column vertical shortening due to elastic, shrinkage and creep effects, 5) measuring the lateral displacement of the tower under its own gravity loads (including asymmetrical effects) resulting from immediate elastic and long term creep effects, 6) measuring the building lateral movements and dynamic characteristic in real time during construction, 7) measuring the building displacements, accelerations, dynamic characteristics, and structural behavior in real time under building permanent conditions, 8) and monitoring the Pinnacle dynamic behavior and fatigue characteristics. This extensive SHM program has resulted in extensive insight into the structural response of the tower, allowed control the construction process, allowed for the evaluation of the structural response in effective and immediate manner and it allowed for immediate correlation between the measured and the predicted behavior. The survey and SHM programs developed for Burj Khalifa will with no doubt pioneer the use of new survey techniques and the execution of new SHM program concepts as part of the fundamental design of building structures. Moreover, this survey and SHM programs will be benchmarked as a model for the development of future generation of SHM programs for all critical and essential facilities, however, but with much improved devices and technologies, which are now being considered by the author for another tall and complex building development, that is presently under construction.