Posted on 06/22/2008 10:44:14 AM PDT by LibWhacker
The enormous steel ball you see in the photos (and the incredible video below) is the world’s largest ‘tuned mass damper’ and sits near the top of the world’s largest completed skyscraper on earth, taipei 101 in taiwan. the idea behind a tuned mass damper is quite simple: as a building sways (resulting from high winds, earthquakes etc), its tuned mass damper, essentially a finely tuned and ridiculously heavy pendulum, will move in opposition to the structure’s oscillations and minimise any movement. if that makes no sense, watch the crude gif below.
due to both the immense size of taipei 101 and the fact that it sits just over 600ft from a major fault line, engineers had no choice but to install one of this size at a cost of $4m. too heavy to be lifted by crane, the damper was assembled on site and hangs through 4 floors of the skyscraper. it can reduce the building’s movement by up to 40%.
image sources: 1, 2, 3 
image source: wikipedia
now for an incredible video. on may 12th, as the horrendous earthquake occurred in china’s sichuan province, tremors were felt for miles, including in taipei 101. youtube user phuaalvin was in the building at the time and said that as the building started to shake, dozens of people ran to the damper to watch it in action. here’s the video he took… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYSgd1XSZXc"/
And of course, the opposite:
Why Buildings Stand Up: The Strength of Architecture (Paperback)
by Mario Salvadori (Author)
There might be another book that I bought a while ago on the same kind of things called “Why buildings DONT fall down” I can’t remember the exact title.
I bought it because I din’t understand why they DIDN’T fall down.
After having been through 2 major earthquakes when I lived in California, I don’t trust much of anything structurally.
I know that if we have a big one here in Texas, a lot of freeways and overpasses standing on spindly little one legged suppports are going to hit the dirt.
Let’s HOPE and PRAY that terrorist’s don’t cut the cable supporting that enormous weight, letting it crash through floor after floor, till it finally stopped somewhere in the basement! It might be worse that 9/11!
It’s Devolution in action!
Punk rock is prohibited in the vicinity of the damper.
You're dating yourself.
Excuse my scaredy cat wussiness, but if I’m going to be that high off of the ground, I want to be in an airplane.
I’ll agree with surface area, but not volume. Thanks.
Devo is prohibited too. But I think that’s a China-wide ban not just this building. ;^)
OK. Help the slow. i don’t get the devo connection?
See #33.
“A sphere gives the largest unit mass per unit volume”
So the shape changes the density of the material? Amazing.
“A sphere gives the largest unit mass per unit volume”
The theory behind the Kramerica oil sphere.
Wonder what the natural frequency is . . . and if you pump it in, what happens, ball or no.
Well duh on me. The picture of the stacked sphere hadn’t loaded yet or I’da figured that one out!
"Whip it. Whip it into shape. Not!
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