How do steel buildings respond to natural disasters?

2025-03-27 15:13:04

In cases such as Tokyo Harumi Tower's seismic dampers successfully resisting a 7.3 magnitude earthquake, Zhuhai Hengqin IFC passing design verification for resisting an 18 magnitude typhoon, and steel-framed residences remaining structurally intact during the California mountain fires, steel-framed buildings are demonstrating their unique advantages in coping with natural disasters. By integrating advanced engineering technology, intelligent monitoring and resilience design, the disaster defense capability of modern Steel Structure buildings has realized revolutionary improvement.

I. Earthquake Disaster Defense System

Breakthrough in energy dissipation and seismic damping technology By adopting the combination system of Buckling Restrained Brace (BRB) and viscous damper, a high-rise building's actual measurement shows that the efficiency of seismic energy absorption can be increased to 85%. In the Wenchuan Earthquake Site Reconstruction Project, the steel frame structure with 3% additional damping ratio was set, and the maximum inter-story displacement angle was controlled within 1/250, far exceeding the normative limit of 1/50.

Self-resetting structural system innovation Shape memory alloy (SMA) connectors were applied in an experimental building in Tangshan, and the post-earthquake residual deformation rate was only 1/8 of that of the traditional nodes. pre-stressed steel frames, together with friction-slip nodes, realized automatic restoration of the building's verticality deviation of ≤0.1% within 3 hours after the earthquake.

Typhoon Defense Technology System

Optimized design of aerodynamic shape The streamlined steel roof determined by Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation reduces the wind pressure coefficient of a super high-rise building in Shenzhen by 42%. A coastal building complex adopts honeycomb façade opening design, successfully controlling the wind vibration acceleration under a Category 17 typhoon to below 0.15m/s².

Active Mass Damping System (ATMD) The 1,000-ton pendulum damper installed in the Shanghai Center Building can reduce the amplitude of building oscillation caused by typhoons by 40%. It is equipped with a prediction control system that activates the damping mode 30 minutes in advance based on meteorological data, reducing energy consumption by 65% compared with traditional systems.

III. Flood Disaster Response Program

High-pile bearing foundation system A building in the estuary of the Pearl River adopts a 30m-long steel pipe pile foundation, together with a detachable flood wall (with a design value of 50kN/m² for water pressure resistance), to maintain structural stability in a 100-year flood. The foundation is flexibly connected to the superstructure, allowing for buoyancy adjustment due to 200mm water level change.

Emergency Drainage Channel Design An underground steel parking lot in Tokyo is equipped with an intelligent hydraulic gate system, which automatically opens the drain holes when the flood pressure reaches a head of 3 m, with a maximum drainage capacity of 800 m³/min. The surface of its stainless steel components is treated with plasma nitriding, with a corrosion-resistant life of 50 years.

Fourth, fire defense technology upgrades

Fire-resistant steel component revolution Adding Mo-Cr-V alloy fire-resistant steel (600 ℃ yield strength retention rate of ≥ 67%), with intumescent fireproofing paint (3 hours of fire-resistant time limit), so that the steel columns of a commercial complex in the fire loss of load-bearing capacity rate of ≤ 15%. Its smoke toxicity index TSP600s ≤ 0.5, which is far better than that of traditional structures.

Intelligent Sprinkler System Integration Adopting infrared thermal imaging to locate the precise fire extinguishing system, in the actual test of a steel hotel in Dubai, the response time of fire recognition is ≤3 seconds, and the precision of extinguishing agent release reaches 0.5m³, which enhances the efficiency of the traditional system by 8 times, and reduces the water loss by 90%.