Burj Khalifa

Burj Khalifa:

Height: 830 m

Floors: 163

Construction started: September 21, 2004

Opened: January 4, 2010

Address: Emaar Blvd - Dubai - United Arab Emirates

Burj Khalifa, known as Burj Dubai prior to its inauguration, is a skyscraper in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and is the tallest man-made structure in the world, at 829.8 m.While it is superlative in every respect, it is the unique design of Burj Khalifa that truly sets it apart. The centrepiece of this new world capital attracted the world's most esteemed designers to an invited design competition.
Ultimately, the honour of designing the world's tallest tower was awarded to the global leader in creating ultra-tall structures, the Chicago office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP (SOM) with Adrian Smith FAIA, RIBA, consulting design Partner. The selected design was subject to an extensive peer review program to confirm the safety and effectiveness of the structural systems.

Over 45,000 m3 (58,900 cu yd) of concrete, weighing more than 110,000 tonnes were used to construct the concrete and steel foundation, which features 192 piles buried more than 50 m (164 ft) deep. Burj Khalifa's construction will have used 330,000 m3 (431,600 cu yd) of concrete and 39,000 tonnes (43,000 ST; 38,000 LT) of steel rebar, and construction will have taken 22 million man-hours.
Exterior cladding of Burj Khalifa began in May 2007 and was completed in September 2009. The vast project involved more than 380 skilled engineers and on-site technicians. At the initial stage of installation, the team progressed at the rate of about 20 to 30 panels per day and eventually achieved as many as 175 panels per day.

The tower accomplished a world record for the highest installation of an aluminium and glass façade, at a height of 512 metres. The total weight of aluminium used on Burj Khalifa is equivalent to that of five A380 aircraft and the total length of stainless steel bull nose fins is 293 times the height of Eiffel Tower in Paris.
In November, 2007, the highest reinforced concrete corewalls were pumped using 80 MPa concrete from ground level; a vertical height of 601 metres. Smashing the previous pumping record on a building of 470m on the Taipei 101; the world’s second tallest tower and the previous world record for vertical pumping of 532 metres for an extension to the Riva del Garda Hydroelectric Power Plant in 1994. The concrete pressure during pumping to this level was nearly 200 bars.
The amount of rebar used for the tower is 31,400 metric tons - laid end to end this would extend over a quarter of the way around the world.

 El Burj Khalifa, conocido durante su construcción como Burj Dubai, es un rascacielos que se encuentra situado en el distrito Downtown Burj Khalifa de la ciudad de Dubái, en Emiratos Árabes Unidos, y es la estructura más alta construida por el ser humano con 828 metros de altura. La construcción comenzó el 21 de septiembre de 2004, y su inauguración oficial fue el 4 de enero de 2010.

El Burj Khalifa es la parte central del desarrollo conocido con el nombre de Downtown Burj Khalifa, un complejo de 2 km2 situado junto a la avenida Jeque Zayed, que atraviesa la ciudad de forma transversal. El arquitecto redactor principal del proyecto es Adrian Smith, que trabajó junto a la firma Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM) hasta 2006. La construcción del Burj Khalifa contó con un presupuesto estimado de más de 4.000 millones de dólares, que se incrementó hasta los 20.000 millones para el desarrollo completo del Burj Khalifa.

 In addition to its aesthetic and functional advantages, the spiraling “Y” shaped plan was utilized to shape the structural core of Burj Khalifa.  This design helps to reduce the wind forces on the tower, as well as to keep the structure simple and foster constructability. The structural system can be described as a “buttressed core”, and consists of high performance concrete wall construction. Each of the wings buttress the others via a six-sided central core, or hexagonal hub. This central core provides the torsional resistance of the structure, similar to a closed pipe or axle. Corridor walls extend from the central core to near the end of each wing, terminating in thickened hammer head walls. These corridor walls and hammerhead walls behave similar to the webs and flanges of a beam to resist the wind shears and moments. Perimeter columns and flat plate floor construction complete the system. At mechanical floors, outrigger walls are provided to link the perimeter columns to the interior wall system, allowing the perimeter columns to participate in the lateral load resistance of the structure; hence, all of the vertical concrete is utilized to support both gravity and lateral loads. The result is a tower that is extremely stiff laterally and torsionally. It is also a very efficient structure in that the gravity load resisting system has been utilized so as to maximize its use in resisting lateral loads.