If Tom Cruise ever heard how the Burj Khalifa creaks when a storm hits the city, he would have worn his harness throughout the shoot of "Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol" in the building.
Yes! the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, Dubai, sways and creaks like a rickety old ship, sailing in rough ocean waters.
The creepy and eerie sounds of the building creaking due to strong winds were captured in a video documented by Gerald Donovan, a film-maker based in Dubai, reports Gizmodo.
However, the Burj Khalifa is not the only building that sways during strong winds or storms, the Empire State Building and the Taipei 101 also do so.
Tall skyscrapers are actually engineered to sway or bend a little during harsh conditions and strong winds so that they don't break into half. The "bending advantage" is given to the buildings in order to destroy or minimize the mechanical advantage that the winds or other forces like compression, precipitation and gravity can have on the building, explains Straightdope.com.
"A building is like a giant sail with a great deal of area that the wind can push against. The wind is blowing on the building causing it to sway and twist. For certain shapes, the wind can form a wake similar to what you'd see behind a boat with vortices shedding off, alternating on either side and pushing the building from side to side," Jason Garber, a wind-engineering specialist at RWDI, a leading wind tunnel testing firm, said to Studentpulse.com.
"This causes a regular or periodic force that pushes the building side to side across from the wind flow. The frequency at which that happens will vary with wind speed and if those vortices can align with the frequency that the building wants to oscillate at then you can get some very large forces developed," he added.
Usually, people inside the building cannot feel the movement but can only hear the sounds. However, buildings that do not have a very strong foundation might sway and induce motion sickness among inhabitants. The swaying is one of the major building concepts of architecture.
Check out the video of the Burj Khalifa creaking, below:
