Skyscrapers

Hello friends,
Welcome back to Civil Adda

Before learning about our today's interesting topic, let me pose some questions for you.

1.What is the tallest building built by man so far?
     Offcourse you would say it as Burj Khalifa. ..that's a pretty simple question :D
2.Now my question to you is, have you ever thought of how the top most storeys are built?
3.What type of building materials are used for such tall constructions?
4.Do you know that there is a relation between Einstein's Theory of Relativity and  tall buildings and our age ?

Yeah, in the today's topic we are going to discuss all about these interesting things as a part of today's topic Skyscrapers.

So what does this word skyscrapers do refer to ?

Actually the word scraper means that something scratches, so when someone watches these skyscrapers they look like as if they are scratching the sky.
So ultimately skyscrapers means tall buildings .So now the question is how tall is too tall for a building to be a skyscraper ?
 To answer this we need to travel past to late 19th century . In those days even a building of height 20 to 40 mt is considered as a skyscraper. Later that limit was reset to some 100 mt and now it is some 100's of mt.
See how man is resetting his own limits to excel in his field !
This concept of Skyscrapers is undoubtedly originated in the USA. The first skyscraper is The Home

Home Insurance Building

Insurance Building in Chicago which is of about 55 Mt height. There is a skyscraper in India too with the name so called as The Imperial ll in Mumbai it is the tallest skyscraper so far in India.

So what provoked man to build these skyscrapers?
The ability of man to produce mass steel and the advancements in the technology used in the elevators can be considered as the main things that provoked man to build skyscrapers.
Other than those things, these skyscrapers emerged as the rational response to the problem of real estate in the countries like America where the technology is at its cutting edge but the space for habituation is less so they opted to build skyscrapers.

So what type of building materials are used for building  these skyscrapers ?
Normally concrete and steel frame works are used as the basic building materials.
But both of these are having their own darwbacks in serving as a best material.
Inorder to discuss about the drawbacks of concrete we need to discuss about something.

In the real world any building bears two types of loads 1.dead load 2.live load.
Dead load which is the weight of the building itself and whereas the live load refers to the weight added to the building by the humans in the form of furniture.
So whenever we opts for concrete as a building material as we build higher and higher the dead load of the building goes on increases. Which would have its impact on the foundation of the building and inturn it shows it's impact on the problem of land subsidence.

chimney effect_building on fire

So despite all these drawbacks of concrete even if one is going to use it, then most of the engineers now a days would prefer the technique of prefabrication, in which the sub components of the building are manufactured some where and are brought to the site for assembling there.

So if one considers steel frame works as the building material then even they poses a serious impact on the lives of people at the time of sudden fire.
It is so because due to chimney effect the fire is most likely to move in vertical direction which would have a serious impact on the lives of people at times of sudden disasters.

Since steel is poor resistant of fire.

Even these Skyscrapers are having their own disadvantages...

• These Skyscrapers have literally destructed the harmony among the people of a society.
•  And the elevator for a Skyscraper is considered as the Achilles heel. As if the Achilles can be killed, only by hitting him at his heel this skyscraper without elevator is of no use. 
• There is also a problem regarding greenery but in the recent times this has been overcome by the concept of green skyscrapers.



Green skyscrapers

•  And if one is going to construct skyscrapers they need to consider the wind forces too which have a dominant impact on the building.

Besides all these there are many advantages with the skyscrapers.

• These Skyscrapers are considered as the connotation of pride and identity to the country and to the city.
• And these skyscrapers serves the best place for the placement of antenna for tele communication purposes.
• These Skyscrapers would fetch an excellent economy through tourism services.
• By the construction of these skyscrapers one could avoid cutting down of forests for further expansion of the city.

And finally, as an answer to my last question of the introduction about Enstein's relativity, age of people, skyscrapers...

According to theory of relativity, if one goes higher the time moves faster...so if one is going to live in the top most storey of a skyscraper the time there runs faster and so you turns older fastly :D

 Nothing to worry, the rate at which time runs faster when compared to the normal time is too negligible so that you can neglect it :)

So as I conclude that we engineers need to evolve to such a level and should devise plans to overcome problems due to various factors that would affect the safe living of people.

That's all for the today's topic.

Signing off,

Yours UCY.

THANK YOU :)