Facade integrated structural damping systems for tall buildings

As buildings become ever taller and more slender, wind-induced vibration is a serious design issue. This paper studies integrated damping systems for tall buildings using double skin facades (DSF), which are composed of two layers of facades with substantial gaps between them. In the first scheme, the connectors between the inner and outer skins of the DSF system are designed to have low axial stiffness with a damping mechanism. Through this design, the vibration of the primary building structure can be substantially reduced. However, the excessive movements of the DSF outer skin masses are a critical design limitation. In the second scheme, the tuned mass damper (TMD)/DSF damping (DSFD) interaction system is studied to mitigate the design limitation of the first scheme and to address TMD related other design issues. In the interaction system, the performances of the TMD and DSFD are synergistically improved. Compared to the DSFD system, the movements of the DSF outer skin masses can be substantially reduced in the TMD/DSFD interaction system. Compared to the conventional TMD system, the interaction system requires a significantly reduced TMD mass to achieve the same target damping ratio.