 "How Taiwan’s tallest building, Taipei 101, stood tall amid the 7.4-strong earthquake")
The deadly 7.4-magnitude earthquake that hit Taiwan on Wednesday, left at least 12 people dead and damaged 770 buildings, according to the latest estimates.
Buildings in Taipei, the nation’s capital and only 80 miles from the epicentre, trembled fiercely as well during the largest earthquake to strike Taiwan in 25 years.
However, in a stunning feat of contemporary architecture, the iconic Taipei 101 survived the most recent earthquake without any damage.
Here’s all we know about it.
How the Taipei 101 survived the earthquake
Once considered to be the world’s tallest skyscraper, Taipei 101 features a massive tuned mass damper, also referred to as a giant pendulum, to protect itself from earthquakes, according to CNN.
The 660-tonne pendulum, dubbed “Damper Baby,” hangs more than 1,000 feet above the ground and gives the building the ability to endure typhoon winds and earthquakes.
To counteract any movement during an earthquake or high winds, the large steel sphere sways slightly back and forth. The device’s builder and tester, A+H Tuned, claims that it can reduce the tower’s motions by up to 40 per cent.
As per the report, the 41 steel layers that make up the pendulum, which hangs between the 87th and 92nd floors, are nearly five inches thick. It swings within a restriction of 59 inches to prevent excessive movement, and its diameter is almost 18 feet.
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92 steel cables are used to hang it, each measuring 138 feet in length and 3.5 inches in width.
Designed by Taiwanese firm CY Lee and Partners, the skyscraper was the tallest one in the world when it was completed in 2004.
It remained in that position until 2009 when the Burj Khalifa in Dubai toppled it.
How the tuned mass damper works
The tuned mass damper (TMD) or wind damping ball is a passive system tailored to the needs of the building.
“Tuned mass dampers, also called harmonic absorbers, are simple yet effective mechanisms that allow us to design and live in skyscrapers. Without them, the lifespan, structural integrity, and comfort of these high rise buildings would be seriously reduced," according to USA Today which cited A+H Tuned website.
Its major goals are to lessen wind sway and improve comfort while working in such a tall tower.
According to Dailymail, the steel sphere sways in the opposite direction as the building moves in one direction, keeping the structure balanced overall. The sphere will immediately exert an equivalent force to the left, wiping out any initial motion, if the tower is pushed to the right by wind or an earthquake. Thus, despite its swaying, the tower does not collapse.
Being a passive damping system, it relies only on gravity and the movement of the building for operation, receiving no power or control from outside sources.
Modern skyscrapers are designed to be flexible, especially in earthquake-prone areas like Taiwan, even though it seems strange to witness a building wobbling.
“The materials they are made out of are elastic which means that they stretch or contract according to the changing loads acting on them. ‘The amount of this deformation in an individual element (e.g. a beam or column) is only very small, but when you multiply this across all the elements in a tall building, this can lead to significant lateral [sideways] movements,” Professor Antony Darby at the University of Bath’s Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering told Dailymail.
“These movements are not dangerous to the structure itself, but, if excessive can lead to discomfort to occupants,” he added.
In contrast to conventional hidden dampening systems, which are unseen, the Taipei 101 damper is both practical and attractive. Viewers of the observation deck may see how the damping system functions as a whole.
The strongest earthquake to hit Taiwan
The historic quake killed at least 12 people and injured more than 1,000.
Several hundred people remained stranded after vital highways were damaged and the walls of some structures cracked.
The quake’s epicentre was just off the coast of eastern Hualien County, a rural area known for tourism and rice paddy fields, but also the site of frequent earthquakes and tsunamis.
Taiwan’s earthquake monitoring agency said the quake was 7.2 magnitude, while the US Geological Survey put it at 7.4
With inputs from agencies
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