CFD and Wind Tunnel Investigations on Rectangular Building with Corner Cuts

Abstract

Aerodynamic modifications at corners are considered an effective countermeasure to minimize the wind-induced load and load effects. One of the effective corner modification measures is provision of corner cuts to reduce wind-induced along-wind loads and cross-wind vibrations of the building. However, the corner modifications are provided usually throughout the height of the building. The present study deals with the effect of providing corner cuts over limited heights from top of the building. A 1:2:5 rectangular building has been considered for the present study. A corner cut size of 7.5% has been considered. To study the effect of spread over of corner cut over the height of the building, a total number of four cases have been considered, viz. (i) building with full-height corner cut, (ii) building with half-height corner cut, (iii) building with one-third-height corner cut and (iv) building with no corner cut. The study is carried out by using both computational fluid dynamics and wind tunnel experiments. CFD studies included angles of wind incidence of 0° and 90° under open terrain condition. The wind tunnel investigations included pressure measurements on a rigid model with 1:300 geometric scale under simulated open terrain condition for angles of wind incidence of 0°, 45° and 90°. Using the measured pressures, pressure coefficients, drag and lift force coefficients have been evaluated. The effectiveness of the corner cut over different heights of the building model has been studied by comparing the evaluated aerodynamic coefficients. Further, numerical results are compared with experimental results for validation purpose.