• Wind and Structures
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.219-225
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• 2021

Wind tunnel test models for super tall buildings mainly include synchronized pressure models, high-frequency force balance models, forced vibration models and aeroelastic models. Aeroelastic models, especially MDOF aeroelastic models, are relatively accurate, and designing MDOF model is an important step in aero-model wind tunnel tests. In this paper, the authors propose a simple and accurate design method for MDOF model. The purpose of this paper is to make it easier to design MDOF models without unnecessary experimentation, which is of great significance for the use of the aero-model for tall buildings.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.91-99
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• 2017

Special consideration should be given to differential column shortening during the design and construction of a tall building to mitigate the adverse effects caused by such shortening. The effects of the outrigger - which is conventionally used to increase the lateral stiffness of a tall building - on the differential shortening are investigated in this study. Three analysis models, a constant-section, constant-stress, and general model, are prepared, and the differential shortenings of these models with and without the outrigger are compared. The effects of connection time, sectional area, and location of the outrigger on the differential shortening are studied. The sectional area of the outrigger shows a non-linear relation in reducing the maximum differential shortening. The optimum locations of the single and dual outriggers are investigated by an exhaustive search method, and it is confirmed that a global optimum location exists. This study shows that the outrigger can be utilized to reduce the differential shortening between the interior core wall and the perimeter columns as well as to reduce the lateral displacements due to wind or earthquake loads.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.47-64
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• 2018

The last decade has seen great design opportunities for tall building construction around the globe. The best designs represent a new generation of skyscrapers that go beyond willful preconceptions of building form and iconography, trying instead to simultaneously address interrelated issues of program space utility, structural efficiency, and environmentally sustainable systems. The resulting identities of these towers are unique because of their search for the intersection of spaces tuned to people's needs, expressive optimized structures, and high performance, site-responsive systems. This paper, through examples of recent SOM towers, both built and unbuilt, will discuss how a design becomes content-driven, how ideas create value, and how the typology of the tall building is advanced through the integration of architecture design and engineering systems.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.10 no.5
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• pp.401-420
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• 2007

Field measurements of the wind-induced response of two residential reinforced concrete buildings, among the tallest in the world, have been performed during two typhoons. Natural periods and damping values have been determined and compared with other field measurements and empirical predictors. Suitable and common empirical predictors of natural period and structural damping have been obtained that describe the trend of tall, reinforced concrete buildings whose structural vibrations have been measured in the collection of studies in Hong Kong compiled by the authors. This data is especially important as the amount of information known about the dynamic parameters of buildings of these heights is limited. Effects of the variation of the natural period and damping values on the alongwind response of a tall building for serviceability-level wind conditions have been profiled using the gust response factor approach. When using this approach on these two buildings, the often overestimated natural periods and structural damping values suggested by empirical predictors tended to offset each other. Gust response factors calculated using the natural periods and structural damping values measured in the field were smaller than if calculated using design-stage values.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.391-422
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• 2014

The high frequency force balance (HFFB) technique provides convenient measurements of integrated forces on rigid building models in terms of base bending moments and torque and/or base shear forces. These base moments or forces are then used to approximately estimate the generalized forces of building fundamental modes with mode shape corrections. This paper presents an analysis framework for coupled dynamic response of tall buildings with HFFB technique. The empirical mode shape corrections for generalized forces with coupled mode shapes are validated using measurements of synchronous pressures on a square building surface from a wind tunnel. An alternative approach for estimating the mean and background response components directly using HFFB measurements without mode shape corrections is introduced with a discussion on higher mode contributions. The uncertainty in the mode shape corrections and its influence on predicted responses of buildings with both uncoupled and coupled modal shapes are examined. Furthermore, this paper presents a comparison of aerodynamic base moment spectra with available data sets for various tall building configurations. Finally, e-technology aspects in conjunction with HFFB technique such as web-based on-line analysis framework for buildings with uncoupled mode shapes used in NALD (NatHaz Aerodynamic Loads Database) is discussed, which facilitates the use of HFFB data for preliminary design stages of tall buildings subject to wind loads.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.423-441
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• 2014

The high frequency base balance (HFBB) technique is a convenient and relatively fast wind tunnel testing technique for predicting wind-induced forces for tall building design. While modern tall building design has seen a number architecturally remarkable buildings constructed recently, the characteristics of those buildings are significantly different to those that were common when the HFBB technique was originally developed. In particular, the prediction of generalized forces for buildings with 3-dimensional mode shapes has a number of inherent uncertainties and challenges that need to be overcome to accurately predict building loads and responses. As an alternative to the more conventional application of general mode shape correction factors, an analysis methodology, referred to as the linear-mode-shape (LMS) method, has been recently developed to allow better estimates of the generalized forces by establishing a new set of centers at which the translational mode shapes are linear. The LMS method was initially evaluated and compared with the methods using mode shape correction factors for a rectangular building, which was wind tunnel tested in isolation in an open terrain for five incident wind angles at $22.5^{\circ}$ increments from $0^{\circ}$ to $90^{\circ}$. The results demonstrated that the LMS method provides more accurate predictions of the wind-induced loads and building responses than the application of mode shape correction factors. The LMS method was subsequently applied to a tall building project in Hong Kong. The building considered in the current study is located in a heavily developed business district and surrounded by tall buildings and mixed terrain. The HFBB results validated the versatility of the LMS method for the structural design of an actual tall building subjected to the varied wind characteristics caused by the surroundings. In comparison, the application of mode shape correction factors in the HFBB analysis did not directly take into account the influence of the site specific characteristics on the actual wind loads, hence their estimates of the building responses have a higher variability.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.371-377
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• 2007

In this paper, acceleration threshold of perception for the horizontal vibration of tall buildings was estimated. Excessive vibration of tall buildings by wind can give displeasure, such as giddiness and visual insecurity. To provide comfortable environment to residents of tall buildings, acceleration needs to be limited. For tall buildings the first mode of vibration is dominant. To reproduce the first mode of vibration, experiments were performed by generating sine waves by a shaking table. A nitration house was made and forty persons were employed for experiments. The forty persons were organized into five experimental groups, each of which was composed of eight persons, and the threshold of perception for horizontal vibration was measured by increasing acceleration in the range of 0.2Hz through 1.2Hz of frequency, Performance curves were obtained by dividing the distribution of perception for horizontal vibration into the range of $0{\sim}20%,\;21{\sim}40%,\;41{\sim}60%,\;61{\sim}80%\;and\;81{\sim}100%$ and by fitting curves.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.407-419
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• 2022

Many factors should be considered by architects and designers for designing a tall building. Wind load is one of these important factors that govern the design of tall building structures and can become a serious challenge when buildings tend to be built very tall and slender. On the other hand, through the initial stages of a design process, choosing the design geometry greatly affects the wind-induced forces on a tall building. With this respect, geometric shapes with 3-fold rotational symmetry are one of the applied plan shapes in tall buildings. This study, therefore, aims to investigate the aerodynamic characteristics of 8 different geometrical shapes using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) by measuring the drag and lift forces. A case study approach was conducted in which different building shape models have the same total gross area and the same height of 300 meters. The simulation was an incompressible transient flow that ran 1700 timesteps (85 seconds on the real-time scale). The results show a great difference between wind-induced force performance of buildings with different plan shapes. Generally, it is stated that the shapes with the same area, but with smaller perimeters, are better choices for reducing the drag force on buildings. Applying the lift force, the results show that the buildings with plan shapes that have rounded corners act better in crosswind flow while, those with sharp corners induce larger forces in the same direction. This study delivers more analytical understanding of building shapes and their behavior against the wind force through the parametric modelling.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.427-440
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• 2008

Estimates of wind-induced wind effects on tall buildings are based largely on 1980s technology. Such estimates can vary significantly depending upon the wind engineering laboratory producing them. We describe an efficient database-assisted design (DAD) procedure allowing the realistic estimation of wind-induced internal forces with any mean recurrence interval in any individual member. The procedure makes use of (a) time series of directional aerodynamic pressures recorded simultaneously at typically hundreds of ports on the building surface, (b) directional wind climatological data, (c) micrometeorological modeling of ratios between wind speeds in open exposure and mean wind speeds at the top of the building, (d) a physically and probabilistically realistic aerodynamic/climatological interfacing model, and (e) modern computational resources for calculating internal forces and demand-to-capacity ratios for each member being designed. The procedure is applicable to tall buildings not susceptible to aeroelastic effects, and with sufficiently large dimensions to allow placement of the requisite pressure measurement tubes. The paper then addresses the issue of accounting explicitly for uncertainties in the factors that determine wind effects. Unlike for routine structures, for which simplifications inherent in standard provisions are acceptable, for tall buildings these uncertainties need to be considered with care, since over-simplified reliability estimates could defeat the purpose of ad-hoc wind tunnel tests.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.303-311
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• 2019

The effectiveness of aerodynamic modification to reduce wind loadings has been widely reported. However, most of previous studies have been investigated dynamic forces and pressure distributions on tall buildings with various unconventional configurations. This study was investigated dynamic characteristics and aerodynamic instability of super-tall buildings with unconventional configurations through extensive aeroelastic model experiments. Seventeen types of supertall building models were considered such as basic and corner modification with corner cut, chamfered, oblique opening, tapered, inversely tapered, bulged, helical with twist angles of $90^{\circ}$, $180^{\circ}$, $270^{\circ}$, $360^{\circ}$ and composite with $360^{\circ}$ helical & corner cut, 4-tapered & $360^{\circ}$ helical & corner cut, setback & corner cut, setback & $45^{\circ}$ rotate. As a result, aerodynamic characteristics of helical models with single modification are superior to those of other models with single modification. However, effect of twist angle for helical model is negligible. Further, the 4-tapered & $360^{\circ}$helical & corner cut model is most effective in reducing the along- and across-wind fluctuating displacement responses in all of experimental models.