Proposing Cubic-Grid System as a New Structural System for Tall Buildings

Changes in the skyline of cities all over the world show that tall buildings are an interesting solution to accommodating growth more sustainably in today’s urban areas. Stability against lateral loading is the main issue for designing high-rise buildings. Diagrid systems or grid structures are one of these stable systems. For a long time, the only structural pattern used in this system was the triangular modulus (diagrid).

In the present study, a new pattern for grid structures was introduced, and its performance was compared with the two previous common patterns (triangular and hexagonal). The new pattern is called the Isometric Cube grid, thanks to its particular shape. The design process was performed based on a simple stiffness criterion presented in the previous research. In order to calculate the stiffness of the structure for the new pattern, two types of existing structural nodes were distinguished, and the results were combined to determine the stiffness of the unit forming the entire grid.

From the results of analysis, it was found that the optimal angles of diagonal elements were in the range of 50-65 degrees. Although the behavior of the new pattern in terms of shear stiffness was between the two previous patterns (and closer to the hexagonal pattern), the shear stiffness ratio increased from 30° to 65° for cube pattern, while for hexagrid, it decreased over the same range of angles.