12/6/2015

UNIVERSITY
OF TRIPOLI

CE 609 ASSIGNMENT IV

Effect of Creep and Shrinkage on Concrete High Rise Buildings |

Abedelghani Asalai
Lecturer: Dr. Ramadan Murad

Effects of Creep and Shrinkage:

With increasing height of buildings, the importance of time dependent shortening

of columns and shear walls becomes more critical due to the cumulative nature of
such shortening. It is known that columns with varying percentage of
reinforcement and varying volume-to-surface ratio will have different creep and
shrinkage strains. Increasing the percentage of reinforcement and the volume-tosurface ratio reduces strains due to creep and shrinkage. In very tall structures
where a large heavy reinforced column may be adjacent to a lightly reinforcing
shear wall a differential inelastic shortening causes moments in the horizontal
members and also a load redistribution from the shear wall to the column which
has less creep and shrinkage. Although a large amount of research information is
available on shrinkage and creep, it is not directly applicable to column of highrise buildings but is applicable to flexural elements only. In the construction of a
high-rise building, columns are loaded in as many increments as there are stories
above the level under consideration. Such incremental loading over a long period
of time makes a considerable difference in the magnitude of creep and
consequently in the differential movement and load redistribution between adjacent
columns. The significance of incremental loading was first questioned during the
design of the 52-story, 715' (218m) high One Shell Plaza Building in Houston. A
concrete column in a 60 story building may experience a 7 to 10 in (17.78 to 25.4
mm) of shortening because of creep and shrinkage characteristics.

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If this frame shortening is not taken into account in structural and design
consideration, problems may develop in the performance of concrete walls and
levelness of floor systems. Proper awareness of this problem is necessary on the
part of the structural engineer, architect, and the concrete wall supplier to avoid
loss of time and money. If a building was built on an un-yielding foundation, the
maximum effect of column shortening is felt at the roof level. The roof displaces
vertically toward the ground by a maximum value while each of the other floors
exhibits a similar gradual displacement from the design levels. In a concrete frame
this phenomenon may take many years to complete because of long-term effect of
creep, although a major part of it is felt within the first few months of construction.
There is very little the structural engineers can do to arrest or minimize frame
shortening, but they should make the design team aware of the magnitude of frame
shortening so that soft joints of appropriate widths are properly detailed between
the vertical joints of the curtain walls to prevent the load from being transferred
into the building facade. Before fabrication of connections of the curtain wall
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panels, the in-place elevations of the structure should be verified and the panels
fabricated based on those elevations rather than the theoretical elevations. There
must be sufficient space at the joints between the panels to allow for future
movement of the structure as well as the thermal expansion and contraction of the
panels themselves. Insufficient space may result in bowed curtain wall panels or in
extreme cases the panels may even pop off at a later stage. A similar problem
occurs when mechanical and plumbing lines are attached rigidly to the structure.
Frame shortening may force the pipes to act as structural columns resulting in their
distress. A general remedy is to make sure that nonstructural elements are not
brought in to bear the vertical loads. Sufficient compensation should be provided
during design and construction to make sure that nonstructural elements are
separated from structural elements. The axial loads in all columns of a tall building
are very seldom the same, giving rise to the problem of so-called differential
shortening. The problem is more acute in a composite structure because slender
steel columns are subjected to large axial loads during construction. Determining
the magnitude of axial shortening in a composite system is complicated because
many variables that contribute to the shortening of columns cannot be predicted
with sufficient accuracy. The lower part of the column, which is encased in
concrete, is continually undergoing creep, and because the age and strength of
concrete keep changing, their effect on creep is difficult to predict with any
precision. The steel column at any given period during construction is partly
enclosed in concrete at lower floors, with the bare steel section projecting beyond
the concreted levels by as many as 10 or 15 floors. Another factor difficult to
predict is the gravity load redistribution due to continuity of spandrel beams. If the
building is founded on compressible material, foundation settlement is another
factor that influences the relative changes in the assumed elevations of the
columns. The load imbalance equation continually changes, making an accurate
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assessment of column shortening beyond the reach of day-to-day engineering

practice. If all the variables are known, the prediction of differential shortening is
no more complicated than a systematic evaluation of the PL/AE equation.
Although there are basic differences between the loading history of high-rise and
low-rise columns, the routine method of analysis of high-rise structures is
performed on the full building frame without taking into account the sequential
nature of construction and the application of its weight. Ignoring the construction
sequence in a 50- or 60-story concrete column would result in a calculated axial
deformation of about 5 in (127 mm) of immediate axial shortening and a mindboggling value of 10 to 12 in (254 to 305 mm) when creep effects are included in
the computation. Fortunately, the method of construction more or less takes care of
the immediate shortening and to a limited extent the creep effects on lower-level
columns. This is because in practice a tall building is constructed one floor at a
time. When a floor is constructed on top of the frame which is completed so far,
the frame has already foreshortened due to the gravity loads. Since each floor is
leveled at the time of its construction, in concrete construction, the column
shortening which has occurred before the construction of the floor is of no
consequence, Also, the lower-story columns of tall buildings have considerably
smaller creep and shrinkage strains because the incremental load over a 15- to 24month period of construction reduces creep. To estimate the true behavior of the
entire building, a series of analyses taken one story at a time is required, but cost
and time constraints do not allow such an in-depth analysis for routine office
practice. In a concrete building the computation of differential shortening is even
more complicated mainly because of the effects of creep and shrinkage. Creep is
difficult to quantify because it is time-dependent. Initially the rate of creep is
significant and diminishes as time progresses until it eventually reaches zero.
Because of sustained loads there is a tendency for additional stress to be gradually
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transferred to the steel with a simultaneous decrease in concrete stress. Regarding

shrinkage, since evaporation occurs only from the surface of members, the volumeto-surface ratio of a member has a pronounced effect on the amount of its
shrinkage. Columns with varying percentages of reinforcement and varying
volume-to-surface ratios creep and shrink differently. An increase in percentage of
reinforcement and in volume-to-surface ratio reduces the strain due to creep and
shrinkage under similar stresses. Differential shortening of columns produces
moments in the connecting girders and spandrels resulting in load transfer. The
column which has shortened less receives more loads, thus compensating for the
initial imbalance. The length of construction time has considerable effect on the
amount of creep, whereas shrinkage takes place independently of the construction
time.

References:
Structural analysis and design of tall buildings (Bungale S.Taranath) 1988
Effects of column temperature, creep and shrinkage in tall structures (Article) by (Khan ,Fazlur
R. Fintel, Mark) 1968

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