In the early morning hours of August 8, 2015, Typhoon Soudelor came crashing through the city of Taipei, Taiwan, causing widespread damage with torrential rains and powerful winds that reached up to 145 miles per hour. On this morning, Taipei 101 — at the time one of the tallest buildings in the world — stood sturdy and confident, a beacon of strength and structural might against the unpredictable power and dominance of Mother Nature.
As Soudelor raged through the city, Taipei 101 endured the winds, remaining upright and resilient, with the help of a tuned mass damper (TMD), a 728-ton stack of circular plates welded together to form an 18-foot sphere pendulum, suspended and anchored by woven steel cables, between the 87th and 92nd floors of the 101-floor skyscraper. The TMD, designed and fabricated by RWDI, acted as as a giant, five-story-tall counterweight, offsetting…