The Burj Khalifa formerly known as the Burj Dubai, is the tallest building in the world. It is situated in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE). Its height is 828 m. (2717 ft.). Its construction was started in 2004. It took 5+ years to complete and was opened in January 2010. Moreover, Burj Khalifa was opened under the development part of Dubai, called Downtime Dubai.

World records hold by Burj Khalifa

It holds seven world records –

• The tallest building of the world.
• Tallest freestanding structure in the world.
• The highest number of stories in the world.
• Highest occupied floor in the world.
• The highest outdoor observation deck in the world.
• Elevator with longest travel distance in the world.
• The tallest service elevator in the world.

Owner of the Burj Khalifa

The Burj Khalifa was named in the honor of SHEIKH KHALIFA (Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan), the ruler of Abu Dhabi and also the current president of the UAE. But he is not the owner of it. Thus there is no one particular owner of the Burj Khalifa. Few parts of it owned by EMAAR Properties, rest are some individuals, local companies and institutional investors. As Emaar is the developer of Burj Khalifa so he is responsible for its daily maintenance.

Let us discuss its ownership by categorizing in the following parts –

• Residential floors: The building has 900 residential units which were sold to individual buyers, with some owning as many as 22 apartments.
• Offices: The building has 37 floors of corporate suites, which seems to have sold rather than leased.
• Armani Hotel: Owned and operated by Emaar Properties.
• Observation Deck: Owned and operated by Emaar Properties.

How many floors are there in Burj Khalifa ?

The highest residential formal floor is 160. As 160th floor has multiple mezzanine levels for water tanks, elevator equipment and so on.

But there are 20+ floors above 160th floor level, accessed by stairs and ladders but not by elevator, as you go up towards the spire.

Generally people consider there are 163 working floors out of which

• 160-163 floor reserved for mechanical purpose.
• 156-159 floor used by telecom and communication company, broadcast purposes.
• 155 floor is for mechanical equipment.
• 139-154 floor has corporate suites / offices of private investors and local companies.
• rest of the floors are use for variable use or might be residential.

Shape of Burj Khalifa

It is design to resemble the Hymenocallis flower. Its floor plan seems like Y shape as shown in the below figure.

Concrete and other materials

High performance concrete is use to make this super-tall building. However walls are made up of high reinforced concrete core. During its construction, the material in not brought up by crane but was pumped with the help of powerful pumps such as the Putzmeister 14000 SHP-D, a world-record pumping height of 601 m was achieved during the final part of the core wall casting in November 2007.

The weight of the concrete used in the whole structure is equivalent to the weight of 100,000 elephants. The weight of aluminum used on the Burj Khalifa is equivalent to that of five A380 aircraft.

More than 110,000 tons of concrete, 55,000 tons of steel rebar is use and 22 million man-hours to complete the Burj Khalifa. Only 4 men died during its construction.

Foundation type and dimensions

It has approximately 192-194 frictional piles. These are concrete piles having 1.5 m diameter and depth more than 50 m. There is also a raft foundation of 15.25 m and thickness is 3.75 m of slab having area 8,000 sqm.

Earthquake resistance of Burj Khalifa

It is designed for a magnitude 7.0 earthquake, which is significantly stronger. We don’t know how much extra capacity the building has, because what “withstand” means varies from designer to designer and code to code. If the designers say it can “withstand” a magnitude 7 earthquake, they mean that there’s no loss of structural performance, then it would likely be able to take a magnitude 8 earthquake without being heavily damaged, although it would be dicey. But if they were just designing the building to preserve life safety in a magnitude 7 quake, then it definitely wouldn’t hold up to a magnitude 8.