Investigations of Exterior Wind Flow and Aerodynamic Coefficient around Y-Plan Shape Tall Building

Abstract

In recent years, the construction of skyscrapers is emerging in many countries and the study on the behaviour of wind around the building receives an additional interest among structural engineers and architects. Mostly, tall skyscrapers are planned in the shape of ‘Y’ in order to have a maximum exterior view and to support the central core of the structure. In the current scenario, it is important to study the actual wind load for irregular plan shape building. This paper presents the numerical wind flow simulation around ‘Y’ plan shape tall building using ANSYS Fluent software and validation is done using wind tunnel testing. The building model and wind velocity are scaled to the ratio 1:300 and 1:5 respectively. A wind velocity of 10 m/s is applied both for wind tunnel testing and for the numerical simulation. Error analysis is carried out in order to check the accuracy of the results obtained between wind tunnel and CFD. From the test results the mean Cp is investigated for various faces of the building for the wind angle 0˚, 45˚ and 90˚ from both using CFD and wind tunnel. The investigation of drag and lift coefficient is made on Y-plan shape building and it is observed that the maximum drag occurs at 45˚ wind angle, because of the less projected area when compared with the other wind angles 0˚ and 90˚ respectively. Further, this paper continues with the physics of wind flow behaviour around Y-plan shape building and flow character such as vortex formation, streamlines and identification of wake region for different wind angles.