Practical estimation of veering effects on high-rise structures: a database-assisted design approach

Abstract

Atmospheric boundary layer winds experience two types of effects due to friction at the ground surface. One effect is the increase of the wind speeds with height above the surface. The second effect, called the Ekman layer effect, entails veering - the change of the wind speed direction as a function of height above the surface. In this study a practical procedure is developed within a database-assisted design (DAD) framework that accounts approximately for veering effects on tall building design. The procedure was applied in a case study of a 60-story reinforced concrete building, which also considered the dependence of veering effects on the orientation of the building. Comparisons are presented between response estimates that do not account for veering, and account for veering conservatively. For the case studied in this paper veering effects were found to be small.