Aeroelastic and aerodynamic interference effects on a high-rise building

Abstract

The 492m high Shanghai World Financial Centre is an interesting high-rise building in that the cross-section varies with the height. It is surrounded by a number of other buildings, including some of about half the height of it, a slightly lower nearby Jin Mao building, and a higher Shanghai Centre (not considered here). A series of wind tunnel tests for aeroelastic model vibration measurement and rigid model pressure measurement were carried out to investigate the aeroelasticity and aerodynamic interference effects on this building. The results show that, the densely clustered high-rise buildings (excluding the Jin Mao building) located upstream may cause the mean positive pressures of the lower obscured surface of the World Financial Centre to decrease, and the RMS pressures to increase or decrease for different configuration, which would exert some influences on the average and RMS responses. When buildings are located downstream, the wind-induced aerodynamic interference is negligible. When the Jin Mao building lies upstream, the mean positive pressures on the obscured surface of the World Financial Centre would decrease and even may become negative (the maximum absolute values may increase obviously), and the RMS pressures may also increase significantly, which cause the average displacement responses along-wind to reduce, the RMS horizontal displacement responses to increase, and the rotational displacement responses to increase for asymmetrical pressure. Moreover, it will weaken the energy and periodicity of vortex shedding of the World Financial Centre so as to reduce the possibility or amplitude of vortex resonance. More specifically, when the Jin Mao building lies downstream, the interference effects of the wind loads and wind-induced vibration of rigid World Financial Centre are less obvious, however, when the aeroelasticity is considered at the same time, a significant vortex resonance arose in the direction along the first order modal of the World Financial Centre at a lower wind speed, for which the natural frequency is close to the vortex shedding frequency. The findings derived from the present study are believed to be useful to gain further insight into the aeroelasticity and aerodynamic interference effects of high-rise buildings.