Development of response-controlled tall buildings through own-mass mobilisation
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Martinez-Paneda, Miguel
Elghazouli, Ahmed Y
Gouder, Kevin
Algaard, William
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
This paper describes a structural response reduction approach that, rather than adding mass as in conventional mass damping techniques, takes advantage of the large inherent mass present within a building and uses its own mass to generate large levels of reliable damping with minimal differential movements and without the need for frequency tuning. The proposed concept challenges the traditional premise of conceiving tall buildings as rigid, static entities, and exploits movements to improve performance. The underlying premise is investigated using purpose-devised aeroelastic wind tunnel tests on a dynamically scaled model of a 300-metre prototype building in which the damping system is explicitly incorporated. The results show reductions exceeding 70% in peak accelerations and 50% in base moments, relative to a conventional undamped configuration, while maintaining differential displacements between the movable floors and the core below 50 mm under the 50-year return wind. The results of the wind tunnel tests, coupled with complementary numerical studies as well seismic time-history simulations, demonstrate the considerable promise of the proposed system for significantly reducing the demands on the superstructure and foundation. This opens the door for low-carbon, high-performance tall building designs that can enable more resilient and sustainable urban development.
Date Issued
2026-08-07
Date Acceptance
2026-06-16
Citation
Nature Communications, 2026, 17
ISSN
2041-1723
Publisher
Nature Portfolio
Journal / Book Title
Nature Communications
Volume
17
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2026 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
License URL
Identifier
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/42342698
PII: 10.1038/s41467-026-74868-2
Publication Status
Published
Coverage Spatial
England
Article Number
7951
Date Publish Online
2026-06-24