Comparison of wind pressure coefficients between wind tunnel experiments and full-scale measurements using operational data from an urban high-rise building

Abstract

Simulations during the design phase are performed to predict and evaluate the effect of natural ventilation of large buildings. Although the wind pressure coefficient has a significant impact on the prediction accuracy, comparisons between experimental and measured wind pressure coefficients are rare, especially for high-rise buildings in urban areas and under low-velocity outdoor winds commonly used for natural ventilation. This study compared wind pressure coefficients obtained from wind tunnel experiments with measured values to determine their accuracy for a high-rise building with 190 differential pressure transmitters installed on the walls for building monitoring and control. The building is located in an urban area, with several nearby buildings of comparable height. Long-term measurements were available, allowing for a sufficient number of samples even if they were limited to low-velocity outdoor winds. We processed the differential pressure data during building operation to obtain the wind pressure coefficient and compare it with that obtained from wind tunnel experiments. The results showed that the measured wind pressure coefficient can be obtained by appropriately processing the differential pressure data to exclude factors other than wind pressure, and that the measured wind pressure coefficient generally agrees well with the experimental value obtained by wind tunnel experiments.