Strainstall completed a monitoring contract on the tallest man-made structure ever built - the Burj Khalifa Tower in Dubai.

At 828 metres (2,717ft) tall, the tower has 160 floors comprising hotels, restaurants, luxury residences, offices, and the world’s highest swimming pool and outside observation deck. It is capable of holding up to 35,000 people at any one time. Strainstall’s six-year contract involved monitoring the preliminary pile tests to ensure the piles could bear the weight of the building. To ensure the building was adequately supported, the concrete and steel foundations featured 192 piles, each 1.5 meters in diameter and 43 meters long. 

In addition to the pile testing, Strainstall supplied and installed a structural monitoring system to monitor the structure’s performance as construction progressed. Strain gauges were used to monitor the stress distribution during the construction and the creep, shrinkage and elastic properties of the concrete to enable comparison with the modelled predicted stresses. 

Strainstall’s structural monitoring system will continue checking that structural behaviour remains within design limits, generating real-time alarms should stresses exceed the limits and thereby allowing structural engineers to intervene and undertake any required remedial works. 

Benefits: 

• Enables an extensive range of structural movement to be monitored 
• Provides continuous data on structural behaviour 
• Alerts structural engineers in the event of any parameter exceeding pre-set limits 

  

Download the Burj Khalifa structural health monitoring case study