INFLUENCE OF NEIGHBOURING BUILDINGS ON WIND LOADS ON TALL BUILDINGS

Abstract

The accurate determination of design wind loads on buildings is very important from the point of view of safe and economic design. For low rise buildings up to 2-3 storey wind loads are not a major problem because low rise buildings have sufficient built-in lateral stability. Modern tall buildings are often very high and flexible, and as such these are more susceptible to wind. Therefore tall buildings are designed for wind loads inveriably. Since the last decade of ninenteeth century intensive research is going on to understand the random nature of wind and its effect on structures. So far a good amount of information is avialable for calculating wind load on a building in isolation. But it may change due to the presence of neighbouring buildings due to interference effect. The surrounding buildings may give shelter in some cases, but on other hand they may channel the flow so as to give rise to wind loads more severe than that would have occurred on buildings in isolation. Investigations on interference effect are relatively fewer and this aspect is not included currently in specifications of information coefficients for tall building design. The available information is also insufficient to develops analytical and numerical methods which can be used for calculating win interference effect on buildings. So far most of the studies were carried out for a set of two buildings. But buildings are generally constructed in groups of more than two buildings. Therefore, there exists considerable need, for carrying out wind tunnel tests on building groups having more than two buildings. In the present study, therefore interference effect among groups of three and four buildings have been studied by performing wind tunnel tests on tall building models. The effect of interference on force and moment coefficient is calculated and results are presented in the form of figures and tables