The 21st International Conference on
Boundary Element and Meshless Techniques
September 6-8, 2024
Nanchang, China

In this talk, the use of the boundary element methods (BEM) in the structural design of tall buildings is highlighted.
First, the direct BEM is introduced to analyze different types of structural slabs. Then the analysis will be extended to be applied for building foundation plates, including rafts and piled-rafts. All types of soil-structure interaction effects are discussed. Hence, it is demonstrated that the soil behavior could be considered as nonlinear to represent reality. The main numerical essence of this part is the involved BEM formulation is being fed with a supporting element(s) stiffness matrices.
Alternative stiffness-based BEM is discussed. In which the overall building slab is treated as single super finite element. This allows coupling the structural floor elements to vertical skeletal elements allowing analysis of tall buildings in a way suitable for using the well-known-building information modelling software (such as Autodesk Revit).
Several other relevant topics will be also discussed such as the structural design procedures for the tall building elements, modelling of post-tensioned slabs, etc.
It will be demonstrated via practical examples that the use of BEM technology opens a new era in the structural design of tall buildings.