WIND INTERFERENCE AMONGST LOW-RISE BUILDINGS

Abstract

Studies in recent years have primarily focussed on the influence of turbulent boundary layer winds on low-rise buildings in open terrains relatively free of surrounding obstructions, However, most of the low-rise buildings are situated in urban areas in close vicinity of neighbouring buildings and other structures. These can have significant effect on the wind loads on low-rise buildings, but these effects are not well known quantitatively so far. The present dissertation has been carried out to study the effect of the interference of a low-rise building on another low-rise building of same size and shape for different separation distances. It involves testing of rigid models of a rectangular building with sloping roof in the open circuit boundary layer wind tunnel at University of Roorkee, Roorkee. Scale of 1:100 has been adopted for fabricating models in the present study for a proposed building having length (18m), width (12m) and eaves height (6 m) with a roof slope of 30-. Models have been tested in the terrain condition corresponding to a power law index of 0.14. Effects of interference have been studied for different separation distances between buildings and at different wind incidence angles. Results have been presented in the form of tables, graphs and figures