China Central Television Headquarter, Beijing

Aalap Patel-35 A
ADVANCE STRUCTURE B.ARCH IV A

Jugal Parekh-34

Project: CCTV Television Station and Headquarters

Client: China Central Television (CCTV)
high:- 234 m
Location: Beijing, China
Site: 18ha in new central business district
Program: Total 575,000 sq.m:
CCTV building 400,000 sq.m; TVCC building 75,000 sq.m; service
building 15,000 sq.m; parking 85,000 sq.m

 Building height 234m

Building width-156m
Site area-599000m
Built with landscape and parking site area-1,87,000m
Height to width ratio- 1.56:1
Structural system floor area-58361 m
Floor area-389,079 m
Ratio of floor area to
structural area- 5.6:1
Area of service
Core- 15,000 sq.m
Excavation depth -24.7m
Foundation-33m long ,1.2 m in dia
1242 piles

Intotal,41882steelelementswitha
combinedweightof125000tonnes,
includingconnections,wereerected,
atapeakrateof8000tonnesper
month.

The new headquarters of China Central

Television contains the entire televisionmaking process
within a single building. The 234m tall
tower redefines the form of the
skyscraper, with the
primary system comprised of a
continuous structural tube of columns,
beams and braces
around the entire skin of the building. In
order to gain structural approval an
Expert Panel
process was necessary, for which a
performance-based analysis was
carried out to justify the

The functions and layout within the CCTV building.

Public space and circulation

Studio and broadcast

The leaning form and varied programme, including the need to

accommodate large studio spaces, posed additional challenges for the
gravity structure, and
resulted in the introduction of a large number of transfer trusses throughout
the tower. Erecting
and connecting the two massive towers presented the structural engineers

The functions and layout within the CCTV building.

ff and VIP facilities

Structural form

Superstructure the continuous tube

Early on, the team determined that the only way to deliver the desired
architectural form of the CCTV building was to engage the entire faade
structure ,creating in essence an external continuous tube system.
Adopting this approach gave proportion that could resist the huge forces
generated by the cranked and leaning form, as well as extreme seismic
and wind events. This tube is formed by fully bracing all sides of the
faade. The planes of bracing are continuous through the building volume
in order to reinforce and stiffen the corners. The continuous tube system
is ideally suited to deal with the nature and intensity of permanent and
temporary loading on the building, and is a versatile, efficient structure
which can bridge in bending and torsion between the Towers, provide
enough strength and stiffness in the Towers to deliver loads to the Base,
and stiff e n up the Base to rein force the lower Tower levels and deliver
loads to the foundations in the most favorable possible distribution, given
the geometry.

Internal primary structure

all the structural support elements in the building are of structural steel,
except some external columns are steel-reinforced concrete columns due to
the magnitude of loads they are designed to carry. The floors are composite
slabs on steel beams. internal elements combine to create unique floor
configurations for every floor of the building. That is, the floor span between
cores or internal columns and the
changes on every floor. Moving up the building, the floor spans increase on
two adjacent sides of the building and decrease on the other two opposite
sides. As a consequence,
where floor spans decrease on the inward sloping sides of the building, some
internal columns can be removed once the distances become structurally
manageable in one

External primary structure

Form the onset, it was decided to adopt an external skin oF leaning
columns, horizontal edge beams and triangulated bracing on a two-storey
pattern to form an enclosed tube
structure to support the building. Furthermore, the braced tube structure
affords a multitude of alternative load paths. Such a robustness feature is
highly desirable, especially in seismically sensitive Beijing. It also provides
safety in the event of an extreme design incident, such as blast removal of
a major column in the building. The external diagrid structure is also boldly
expressed in the buildings faade. It visually expresses the pattern of
forces in the external tube, reinforcing the transparency between
structure and architecture, a strong philosophy in the buildings design.
The unique diagrid pattern in the external structure was arrived at after

Transfer trusses
Transfer trusses are introduced to
collect the columns required at
intermediate heights in the towers to
cope with the increasing floor spans.
The transfer trusses span between
the internal core and the external
tube structure. They are typically
located in plant floors in the building
so as to be hidden from view and
minimize impact to the architecture
and floor usage. The large member
sizes of the transfer trusses mean a
potential for these trusses to act as
outriggers as they link up the external
tube with the internal steel cores. An
outrigger effect would be undesirable
because this would then complicate
the primary seismic load path. To
prevent this condition, the transfer
trusses are connected to the internal
cores and the external columns at
singular pin joint locations only.

Developing and optimizing the bracing pattern

Performance Based Seismic Design

Approach
Non-Linear Superstructure Design And Performance
Verification
Having established the inelastic global
structure and local member deformation
acceptance limits, the next step was to
carry out non-linear numerical seismic
response simulation of the CCTV building
subjected to the Level 2 and the Level 3
design earthquakes. Both the non-linear
static pushover analysis method and the
non-linear dynamic time history analysis
method were employed to
perform this task. Finally, the seismic
deformation demands were compared
against the structures deformation
capacities to verify seismic performance.
This verification was carried
out on a storey-by-storey and a memberby-member basis. For the CCTV building,
all global and local seismic deformation
demands are shown to fall within their
respective acceptance limits, confidently
demonstrating that the building achieves

1. Construction
sequencing and its
effect
on the final stress
in the structural
elements
2. Ensuring the
building and
elements are
constructed to the
designed setting
out
and positions,
within allowed
construction
tolerance
This large-scale shaking table test was of particular interest. In China it is
3. Construction and
the norm for buildings that fall outside the code to be thus studied, and the
linking of the
CCTV model was the largest and most complex tested to date. The nature of
overhang
the testing required the primary structural elements to be made from
copper (to replicate as much as possible in a scale sense the ductility of
steel). The model also included concrete floors (approximately 8mm thick)
to represent the 150mm thick composite floor slabs. In all cases, the
physical tests correlated closely with the analysis.

APPLICATION OF PRESSURE INTEGRATION

METHOD TO CCTV

The coordinate system and dynamic model of the

CCTVs structural design was adopted for the wind
engineering study, so that the predicted wind loads
could be readily used by the structural engineers.
This dynamic model consisted of four main axes,
Tower 1 axis, Tower 2 axis, Top Link axis, and
Bottom Link axis, The element properties were
calculated based on these axes. The first 9 modes
of vibration were considered in the analysis. The
first two modes represented the sway modes in
northeast-southwest direction, and northwestsoutheast direction, respectively. The third mode
showed a twist motion between the two main

In total, 285 pressure taps

were installed on the 1:500
scale model to
simultaneously measure
wind pressures during wind
tunnel testing. To consider
the near-field terrain effects,
a proximity model, which
simulated the surrounding
buildings and structures in
details within 600m radius
from the site, was included
in the wind tunnel model.
The farfield terrain effects
were simulated using spires
and
roughness elements to
duplicate the representative
wind profile and turbulence
properties in the area.

The critical load patterns that needed

to be examined in detail were
discussed and determined by the
structural engineers and the wind
engineers from viewpoints of structural
design as well as wind response. These
load patterns included the worst
overturning moments and shears
about various principle axes, the worst
differential loads
between the two towers, the worst

Structural form
Substructure and foundations
The main Towers stand on piled raft foundations. The piles are typically
1.2m in diameter, and about 52m long. Given the magnitude and
distribution of the forces to be transferred to the ground, the raft is up to
7.5m thick in places and extends beyond the footprint of the Towers to act
as a toe, distributing forces more favorably into the ground.
The foundation system is arranged so that the center of the raft is close to
the center of load at the bottom of each Tower, and no permanent tension
is allowed in the piles. Limited tensions in some piles are only
permitted in major seismic events. For the Base plus three e - storey
basement,
a traditional raft foundation is used, with tension piles between column
locations to resist uplift from water pressure acting on the deep basement.
15-20m long, 600mm diameter tension piles will be arranged under the
raft with additional 1.2m diameter piles under secondary core s and
columns supporting large transfer trusses from the studio areas.

Cutting down piles by hand. Column embedded in

aration of foundation raft.

construction

One of several construction

sequence loading
arrangements considered.

construction

Overhang construction
Construction of the Overhang began after the steelwork for the two Towers
was completed to roof level.
the structure was cantilevered out piece-by piece from each Tower over
the course of the next five months.
This was the most critical construction stage, not only in terms of
temporary stability but also because its presence and the way it was built
would change the behavior of those parts of the Tower already
constructed.
The forces from the two halves of the partly constructed Overhang would
be concentrated in the Towers until such time as the two halves were
linked and the building became a single continuous form, when the loads
would start being shared between all of the permanent structure.

The Overhang before connection.

pleted Overhang structure, showing the
diameter circles punched in the deck Installation of first connection
element.
glazed viewing platforms for the
The seven initial connection
wing gallery.
elements.

The force from the braces and

edge-beams must be
transferred through and into
the column sections with
minimal disruption to the
stresses already present in the
column. The connection is
formed by replacing the flanges
of the steel column with large
butterfly plates, which pass
through the face of the column
and then connect with the
braces and the edge-beams.
No connection is made to the
web of the column to simplify
the detailing and construction.
The joints are required to
behave with the braces,
beams, and columns as strong
joint/ weak component