Optimal compensation of differential column shortening in high-rise buildings

To avoid unexpected damage in structural and nonstructural elements, differential shortening between vertical members resulting from differing stress levels, loading histories, volume-to-surface ratios and other factors in a high-rise building must be properly considered in the design process. While research activity has been reported in the literature on the development of estimation algorithms or prediction procedures for the elastic and inelastic shortenings of vertical members, no algorithms or systematic methods for the compensation of the differential shortenings have been reported. In this paper, a compensation method for the differential column shortening in a high-rise building is formulated into an optimization problem. A simulated annealing algorithm is used to find optimal solutions. The proposed method is applied to the compensation of the differential shortening of the vertical members in two high-rise buildings, including one verifying example of a 70-storey building and a practical example of a 63-storey building. As demonstrated in the examples, the differential shortenings of the examples are effectively controlled by the optimal compensation method.