Wind load evaluation approach for building cluster considering effect of neighboring buildings

Abstract

Wind loading to a building is generally affected by neighboring buildings. Often, such an effect is neglected in case where wind loads to a large number of buildings must be evaluated; e.g. in the context of wind risk assessment for building portfolio. The present paper proposes a simple approach for wind load evaluation of buildings considering the effect of neighboring buildings. The underlying idea is that buildings in a portfolio is divided into clusters according to distances between neighboring buildings. Then, depending on the characteristics of the geometrical locations (edge or inner area) of individual buildings in each cluster, wind loadings to buildings are evaluated. A wind tunnel experiment with a simplistic configuration of a building portfolio is conducted to justify the proposed approach. The result suggests that buildings may be grouped in a same cluster when the distance to adjacent buildings is less than two times of the roof height; wind loadings to the buildings located in inner area up to the third outer layer in a cluster may be reasonably assumed to be identical; the effect of neighboring buildings on wind loading to the buildings located at the outmost and second outer layer becomes negligible when the distance to the neighboring buildings exceeds 14 times of the roof height.