TORRE MAYOR

GROUP 5:
KOMPELLA KASYAPA SRIRAM (CE14B026)
SHIYAS P.H. (CE14B068)
PEEUSH JOSE MATHEW (CE14B096)
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

We wish to express our sincere thanks to Prof. A. Meher

Prasad for his valuable guidance throughout the course.

After this course, whenever we look at structures, we

started observing the load paths, special features like
eccentricities, stiffness elements etc., apart from just
admiring the architectural beauty.

We are highly indebted to our TA Mr. Sabareesan Mani for

his helpful suggestions, guidance and coordination.

Sriram, Shiyas & Peeush

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 CONTENTS

No. Subject Page no.

1 Introduction 3

2 Architectural aspects 4

3 Intelligent building 6

4 Foundation 7

5 Structural Systems 8

6 Lateral Loads and Lateral Loads Bearing System 12

7 Construction Practice 20

8 Conclusion 20

9 The 2003 Earthquake 21

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INTRODUCTION
Torre Mayor is located in Reforma Centro District of Mexico City in Mexico. The word
“Torre Mayor” in Spanish literally translates to “Major Tower”. It means Great Building.
The construction of Torre Mayor began in 1999 and was completed by late 2003. It was
the tallest building in Mexico at the time of construction. Later, it was surpassed in height
by Torre BBVA Bancomer in 2015 and Torre Reforma in 2016 (both Mexico City), which
were in turn surpassed by Torre KO (San Pedro Garza Garcia) in 2017. So now, it is the
third tallest building in Mexico City, fourth tallest in Mexico and 18th tallest in Central
America with a height of 225m (738 ft.).

Torre Mayor was built by Canadian businessman Paul Reichmann as an office building.
He also has part of the ownership of the building. It is also partly owned by a Hungarian-
American investor George Soros and a group of institutional investors. It was designed
by the architectural firms Zeidler Partnership Architects and Executive Architects
Adamson Associates Architects. The structural engineers were from WSP group.

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 Fig 1& 2: Torre Mayor

The main speciality of Torre Mayor is its ability to resist earthquakes. Since the Mexico
City is highly earthquake prone, the building incorporates several anti-earthquake
measures. Torre Mayor is one of the best earthquake resist buildings on Earth, being able
to resist earthquakes measuring upto a magnitude of 8.5 on the Richter scale. This is
equivalent to the effect caused by a wind of 22 miles per hour. The building even
survived easily a high magnitude earthquake in Mexico City which occurred at the later
stages of its construction.

ARCHITECTURAL ASPECTS
The shape of the building is like a rectangle combined with an arch segment at the south
side of the building, which forms a curved facade at the south side. There are a total of 59
levels to the building including 4 underground parking levels and 55 levels above the
ground. The dimension of the floor plan of the building is around 80 m-by-80 m at the
lower levels. This goes upto the 4th level. Then the dimensions reduce to 80 m-by-65 m
from the fourth level to the 10th level. Above the 10th level the tower plan dimensions are

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further reduced to its typical tower size of 48 m by 36 m. The levels from 11 to 53 are
used for office purposes.

Fig 3: Glass provides view in the south facade

The building has a total floor area of 84,139 sqm. There is 157,000 m of total
construction including 73,900 sqm of total office space and 3,100 sqm of retail space.
There is 30,000 sqm of glass in the south facade (the curved part) with thermal and
acoustic isolation. And the opposite side of the building (the plain side) has 13,500 sqm
granite precast. The glasses in the south façade provide views to outside and it allows
high percentage of light transmission and low heat transmission. There is marble and
granite finishing in the common areas and lobbies. 46,916 m3 of concrete and 21,200
tons of structural and reinforcement steel have been used to construct this building.

There are a total of 29 elevators in the building with a top speed of 6 m/s. They take 36
seconds to reach from the ground floor to the 52nd floor. Out of the 29 elevators, 27 are
for passengers and other two are for moving goods. The elevators can transport upwards
70,000 people per day. In addition to the four below ground parking levels, there are also
nine above-ground parking levels. In total there are 2000 parking spaces in the building.

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Torre Mayor also has probably the highest public observatory in the city. There is a
public observation deck in the 52nd floor towards the west side of the building. You can
also see a picture of that. There is also a helipad on top the building.

Fig 4: Observation deck and helipad

INTELLIGENT BUILDING
Torre Mayor is an intelligent building. Intelligent building is defined as a building that
optimizes the four basic elements of a building which are the structure, system, services
and management; and by optimizing these four elements and the inter-relationship
between them, the building provides a productive and cost effective environment.

There are many features which makes Torre Mayor an intelligent building. Its elevators
have a seismic detector which detects any movement of earth. So in case any earthquake
happens, it automatically stops the elevator to the nearest floor and that will allow
passengers to get off quickly and avoid accidents. The Torre Mayor is administered by
the Building Management System (BMS). BMS is an intelligent system that controls all
facilities of the building to at most efficiency for protecting the life of the users. The

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integrated system has the ability to control elevators, lighting and fire protection in the
building.

The underground injection machines have fans and fresh air exchange for preventing the
increase in concentration of pollutants inside the building. This is also linked to the
intelligent building system. The injection and extraction fans operate according to the
limits of the alarms set for the CO sensors. When the limit of the CO sensor exceeds 50
ppm, all fans will turn on starts decreasing the concentration of CO in the building. Thus
it maintains that maximum value of CO (50 ppm) providing air quality to all the people
inside the building.

Torre Mayor was the first building in Mexico that met the NOM-008 standard for energy
efficiency which is now a mandatory for all nonresidential buildings. It also has an
automatic water saver, which is one of the first to be used in Mexico City. These factors
make it a green building.

The lighting in the lobby, commercial and parking areas are controlled by the Lutron
Intelligent System. This system controls the lightings for saving energy to a great
efficiency by increasing the duration of the lights with special ballasts. These lighting
controls are in common areas such as emergency stairs, mechanical rooms etc.

FOUNDATION
The tower is built on a deep foundation that is a simple combination of a caisson and a
mat system. Mexico City is built on deep layers of soft deposits of humus. The water
table of the location is also very high. These layers of soft clay are called “Depositios
Profundus”. This extends to as deep as 60m in some areas and at least 20m in some.
Below this soft clay is a hard rock bed which would provide the necessary anchorage for
the pile foundation.

Hence it is decided that caissons were used for foundation. The caissons were a group of
piles embedded into one, with diameter of about 1.2m. These were also made to have ribs

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around them to improve the friction gripping. The caissons extended to about 60m in
certain locations and at least 40m in most of the locations to be embedded into the hard
rock layer for anchorage.
All of these Caissons were connected by Reinforced concrete mat. Special care had to be
taken while the entire mat was being laid to avoid shrinkage cracking in early stages.
Curing has been done as earless possible to avoid plastic shrinkage. The volume of the
construction was well planned and necessary contraction joints were left.

All in all the foundation has 252 piles upto 60m depth. The thickness of the mat varied
depending on the amount of load transferred and a bare minimum was maintained to
avoid the differential settlements. The mat slabs were 2.5m thick in the location of the
Tower Core columns. This is was because of the additional stiffness and extra dead loads
coming onto the foundation causing overturning moments. The thickness was tapered
down to 1.0m in locations of lesser loads and overturning moments.

In addition to connecting the caissons, the mat also held in place an 800mm foundation
wall at the basement level. Slurry walls were specified for this foundation walls due to
the high water table of the location and soft earth. Slurry is essentially a mixture of
Bentonite in water. This had high absorbing Montromillite which would become a thick
and dense liquid. This when poured into trenches would provide the required outward
hydrostatic pressure to counter the effects of high water table. The reinforcement cage
can then be lowered into the slurry while simultaneously concreting using premier
concrete. Termite concrete is essentially highly flow-able concrete in which the surface
tension of water has been greatly reduced by the use of super plasticizers hence reducing
the viscosity and increasing the flow-ability of the concrete. The slurry was held in place
before pouring by a 200mm concrete lining walls. These were constructed before the
construction of the rest of the underground structure. The slurry (600mm thick) was then
placed. Only after the construction of the slurry wall has the site excavation started to
prevent the water seepage into the site area which would then require pumping

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operations. This also improved the durability and reduced the water seepage into and
through the foundation.

STRUCTURAL SYSTEMS

Fig 5: Truss Structure of the faces and the diamond shaped viscous damper systems

The superstructure of the building is again a indeterminate combination of the steel brace
frames, truss action and a stiff reinforced concrete core. The truss action is also provided
by the viscous damping mechanism to resist the sudden seismic loadings as will be
discussed in much more detail in the following parts of this report.

The columns in the structure are two-coupled composite columns. These span vertically
between the bracing levels and provide the strength and stiffness required. The steel
columns in the interior and the perimeter of the tower are encased in reinforced concrete.
This provides additional strength and load carrying area. This acts like jacketing and also

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improves the durability. This jacketing is provided for the the columns in the core
(interior) of the first 35 floors and columns in the perimeter of the first 30 floors. This
enhancement in durability and strength is highly economical compared to advanced
techniques like fibre passive reinforcements, etc.

The lowest level of the structure is around 15m below the ground level. There are 4
storeys below ground level dedicated to and underground parking structure. These 4
floors have a flat slab structure with reinforced concrete and composite columns. This is
made considering the high water table in mind. Necessary precautions have been taken to
make the concrete as impervious as possible by incorporating Silica Fume into
construction. This SCM is a highly fine powdery material that fills the voids in the
interface between the aggregate and the cement matrix making it more impervious and
also reducing the Calcium Hydroxide in the concrete matrix by pozzalanic activity on the
cement hydrate reaction.

Floor framing:
The floors are made of a 75mm (3”) composite metal deck with 65mm (2.5”) of concrete
supported on steel framing connected via shear studs. The shear studs transfer the shear
force between the components of the composite deck. They enhance the load carrying
capacity of the slab. They are also present to transfer the diaphragm shear loads to the
frame. The studs are welded to the metal deck.

Certain floors in the building are subjected to dynamic loadings as well. This is with the
presence of the Mechanical units and the HVAC central systems. In these floors the slabs
are made much thicker. This helps in carrying higher and more dynamic loads. The
ceilings are also made thicker in all the levels in general. This is to improve the sound
insulation of the building.

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Most of the floor are in the building is column free with around 1,650 to 1,825 sq.m
distributed between columns. This is possible only as a result of the cantilevered floors
about the central concrete core. The steel bracings on the outside provided the required
indeterminacy of the building. The central core also took the loadings due to the multiple
functions of the tier like the escalators and elevators.
Fig 6: Column free floor area of a typical floor

The above figure shows a Column free floor area of a typical floor. Three such designs
exist for all the floors in the building. One from Level 9-19, one from level 19-36, the
final one from level 35-52.

Special Features:
• As mentioned the intelligent building required specified electrical wiring. Therefore an
electrical metal deck has been specified. This cellular composite deck allows cables
and ducts to pass through the deck in at least 1 direction. The structural strength and
stiffness lost due to this electrified metal deck in the place of a normal deck is
compensated by specially detailed trench header systems. These trench headers
provide diaphragm action in this weakened zone.
• A low rise parking system has been provided in the level 10 of the structure. This is
made by a floor diaphragm action in the system. This creates a two-level parking in the

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 same area increasing the floor footprint. Special care had to be taken in installing the
floor diaphragms to not interfere with the towers later load resisting system. The paths
of the lateral loads transfer in this floor diaphragm are ensured to not align with that of
the entire tower.
• The ductility and the amount of steel required for the entire building is much lesser
because of the viscous dampers provided to ensure the lateral load energy dissipation
during seismic activity.
• The front south face is incorporated with an arch mechanism to take the compressive
loads on the face in the most efficient way. This is done by receding the floor plates
below level 10 to allow an opening for an arch with its apex at level 10. Free standing
columns were provided and the beams sized to maintain the stiffness compatible with
the rest of the floors and the north face of the structure. This open space provided
made an open plaza and lobby entrance to the building more aesthetically appealing.

Fig 7: The Receded floors forming a load bearing arch on the south face

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 LATERAL LOADS AND LATERAL LOADS
BEARING SYSTEM

SEISMIC LOADS

In 1985, an earthquake of magnitude 8.1 hit Mexico and completely destroyed the
Mexico City. After 14 years the site chosen to build Torre Mayor was the lakebed area
where most of the 1985 earthquake damage occurred. This was a huge challenge for the
design team. To add to this the Mexico City Building Code (MCBC) had very strict
guidelines related to earthquake.

• Calculation of Seismic Design Forces

According to the code Mexico is divided in 4 seismic zones A B C and D (A seismic zone
is a region in which the rate of seismic activity remains fairly consistent.) and for each
zone based on soil characteristics it is divided into three -type I and type II and type III

o Type I – Frim soil

o Type II – Transition soil
o Type III- Soft soil

Fig 8: Seismic zone map of Mexico

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According to Mexican City Building Code (MCBC) Torre Mayor lies in seismic zone B
and soil type II/III hence the design seismic forces were calculated for a given return
period using the above data

A Site-Specific Response Spectra study was also performed at the Instituto de Ingenieria
(UNAM) and the final seismic design of the building was according to the Site-Specific
Response Spectra, developed in compliance with the MCBC.

WIND LOADS
The basic wind speed in this location as per Mexican city building code (MCBC) is
160mph. But the governing lateral force was due to seismic effects. Wind tunnel test was
conducted at the University of Western Ontario’s Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel
Laboratory to calculate the exact wind loads acting on the system

LATERAL LOAD BEARING SYSTEM

On calculating the design seismic forces, the next step for the engineers was to come up
with a structural configuration to resist this force. The task given to the design team was
straightforward, yet very challenging; this being simply to “build a 50+ story building in an
area where building codes effectively limit the height of tall buildings to 30 floors or less.”

The design team analysed more than 25 different structural systems, but was unable to
find a structural configuration allowing a 55-floor building to be constructed at the site.
The best configurations yielded a design with 35-38 floors maximum. As a last resort, the
potential of adding viscous damping to the structure was evaluated as a means to reduce
structural stress during seismic loadings.

The underlying design concept of using viscous dampers was ‘to use the dampers to
reduce stress, then lighten the building frame by removing steel until the stress crept up to
the allowable level permitted by the code. Conceptually, the steel that had been
“removed” by this process could then be used to build additional floors’

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The overall lateral load bearing system of Torre Mayor consist of a trio system

CONVENTIONAL DEFLECTION SENSITIVE SYTEM

Torre Mayor has a tube in tube lateral load system. This causes the building to act like a
hollow cylinder, cantilevered perpendicular to the ground. The super braced frame at the
perimeter of the tower coupled with the perimeter moment frame forms the outer tube.
The core composite columns are braced together forming the inner tube of the building.
The inner tube and the outer tube forms the conventional deflection sensitive lateral load
bearing system

Fig 9: Floor plan of Torre Mayor with inner and outer tube

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 Fig 10 & 11: Outer tube system of Torre Mayor

DAMPING SYSTEM

• Viscous Dampers

Fig 12: Fluid viscous dampers as a part of a bracing element

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Viscous dampers are hydraulic devices that dissipate the kinetic energy of seismic events
thereby reduces the stresses on the building members allowing it to remain in elastic state
during an earthquake

Principle of Viscous Dampers

Fig 13: Parts of viscous dampers

The main component of a viscous damper is the viscous fluid present inside it (Shown as
damping medium in the above figure). When the damper is subjected to external loads to
be compressed or stretched, the piston rod with piston will make reciprocating motion in
the cylinder to force the damping medium move back and forth between the two cavities
separated by the piston. This gives rise to friction between the molecules of the damping
fluid thereby generating heat energy. Thus, it transforms mechanical energy caused by
earthquakes, winds or other structural vibrations into heat energy. The temperature
increases, and the heat is ultimately consumed by natural cooling. In this way, the
dampers protect the structure from damage.

Effect of viscous dampers – Test results from experiments (1991-1995)

During 1991-1995 several experiments were conducted to study the performance of
viscous dampers against seismic forces. The figure 7 and 8 shown below is a typical
result of a 1-storey building subjected to 1940 El Centro, California earthquake. By
adding viscous dampers, it was possible to increase the earthquake intensity from 33% of

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El Centro to 100% El Centro without increasing stress or deflection from that of
undamped structure subjected to 33% of El Centro

Figure 14: 1-Storey building subjected to 33% El Centro without dampers

Fig 15: Same building subjected to 100% El Centro with 20% of critical damping -
The dampers generate large hysteresis loop

Calculation of amount of viscous damping required

The inherent damping of Torre Mayor was taken as 1% of critical. Then step by step
computer analysis was done with increment of 2% damping in each step. And finally
when the added damping in the structure reached 10% critical the resulting maximum
height of the structure was calculated to be 57 floors

Placement of dampers

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Torre Mayor has a rectangular cross-section (ignoring the front curved region) with
shorter and longer dimension walls. Placement of dampers along this direction was
mostly governed by architectural constraints.

o Shorter wall
The short walls did not have as many architectural restrictions. Based on cost
optimization a total of 74 dampers having approximately 300 tonnes of force was required to
meet both mechanical and architectural constraints.

Fig 16 & 17: Dampers in short wall

o Longer wall

Architects wanted fewer numbers of dampers in the long wall to get large open space
as the dampers would reduce the viewing area through window glass. The only way to
achieve this in a structure of this size was to use so-called “mega brace” elements,
where a single damper, in a diagonal braces mounting, would span multiple floors of the
building.

The mega elements in Torre Mayor have a length of 20m. With the limited number of
elements specified based on architectural constraints, each damper must accept bi-
directional loads in the range of 500-700 tonnes, thus requiring an extremely large
brace cross section. The brace element must also transmit structural loads to the

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dampers without significant internal strain; otherwise the building deformation during
the earthquake would simply flex and strain the braces elastically without imparting
proper deflection to the dampers.

The resulting solution was to use a structural steel system in the building which
effectively placed the damper elements between widely spaced truss columns which
impart maximum deflections to the mega brace elements. Each mega element is supported
against bucking by the individual floors and floor trusses that the brace passes through in
the area between the truss columns. This minimizes elastic buckling tendencies of the
mega braces. The resulting structural system with mega brace damping elements is
unique, with a U.S. Patent awarded in 2002 to Rahimian for the basic design.

Fig 18 & 19: Dampers in long wall

Calculation of dampers

Fluid damping devices follow a generalized output equation of the form:

α
F = CX˙

Where F = Damping Force

X˙ = Velocity across the damper ends

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 C = the damping constant

α = the Damping Exponent

Based on the above equation the optimal values of C and α was found for each damper.
Finally, 74 viscous dampers in the core and 24 in the perimeter framing are installed to
absorb and dissipate seismic energy. And the output ratings of the damper installed in the
short and long wall are 250 tonnes and 570 tonnes respectively

CONSTRUCTION PRACTICE
Dynamic studies were performed at every stage of construction to verify the structural
performance and stability of the building design under seismic event. Site-specific-
seismic studies have been performed on the as built construction at the specified stages of
construction upto 10th level and 23rd level to see the period of the building to be much
lower than the actual predicted period of the finished building. The effect of
supplementary dampers hasn’t been considered in the evaluation studies to check the
structural stability of the building in case of the failure of dampers. This analysis also
provided an estimate associated with the partial mass of the entire structure that would be
under compensated effect from the impact of indeterminacy.

CONCLUSION
In the 17th century when the city was a Spanish colony, large catastrophic foods hit the
city including those that lasted for about 5 years or more. The Spanish governors, instead
of expanding the city into safer and lesser flood prone deltas, drained the city lakes of
water through channels and tunnels in the foolish hopes of lesser water accumulation and
lower slopes. The water has also been diverted into the River Panuco. This although was
an incredible engineering marvel at that time, was not the most of the sustainable
practices as the slopes of the water beds couldn’t be altered leaving the flood plains to
remain the same. On top of this the poachment into the lakes caused higher flood affected
areas leaving the water stagnated for years on end.

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The city’s buildings were later constructed concentrated around these lakes as they were
the new are available for construction. The city has thus been constructed on very
unstable grounds on highly seismic active volcanic terrains. This is as a result of lack of
knowledge of the past although the city planning was brilliant on its own.
The vanished lakes did not mean the vanishing of the underground springs that lead to the
formation of these lakes and thus resulted in a very high water table and left the soil very
loose and soft with humus and deposits.
The realization of this knowledge came in very late by which time the Mexico City was
inhabited by over an increasing number of 6 million people.

The devastating 1985 earthquake that killed over 10000 people ignited the spark of
earthquake resistant construction. Torre Mayor, built on the former bed of Lake Texcoco,
the epicenter of the previous earthquake, has thus been one of the greatest challenges to
overcome to the structural engineering community.

Buildings that later followed trail of Torre Mayor since 2003 in the resistance to seismic
activity were Taipei 101 in Taiwan, the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco, the
Library Tower in Los Angeles and the largest building of all, the Sabiha Gokcen Airport
in Istanbul, Turkey.

“Until man can find a way of quelling the earthquake beast within our earth's crust, he
has no choice but to meet it head on with ever more technological advances in building
design and construction in order to keep the inhabitants of these earthquake zones
around the world, safe and secure, both in their workplaces and in their homes.”

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THE 2003 EARTHQUAKE

Mexico’s coastal region, the state of Colima experienced a 7.6 magnitude earthquake on
21 January, 2003. Very large areas in the interior have also been affected including the
nearby Mexican States of Jalisco and Michoacan and the entire Mexico City area. The
epicenter was located in a less population intensive area, however the damage was
catastrophic collapsing over 2700 structures and damaging more than 13000 residential
and 600 commercial structures. The soft soils in the Mexico City amplified the
earthquake intensity and the tremors couldn’t be dampened for upto 30 seconds.
31 floors of Torre Mayor have been occupied by then and interior finishing works were
still going on. The occupants reported only slight noise and a little more than noticeable
stroking of the dampers which shows that the earthquake’s effect has totally been
dampened by the dampers present in the trussed faced of the building. The post-
earthquake damage inspection noted no damage of any kind to the building.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torre_Mayor
• https://www.emporis.com/buildings/100352/torre-mayor-mexico-city-mexico
• http://www.torremayor.com.mx/RevistaOnline/index.html#page-66
• http://www.architravel.com/architravel/building/torre-mayor/
• http://www.skyscrapercenter.com/building/torre-mayor/1185

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