Wind tunnel modelling of a residential ensemble in a high rise building urban area

Abstract

This paper refers to wind tunnel testing of a residential complex located in a crowded urban area in the vicinity of some tall buildings. Due to the agglomeration of certain urban areas, the erection of new tall buildings becomes increasingly challenging, both in terms of location finding and structural load assessment. For a tall building located in such an area, the complexity of the structural challenges is increased by the loads resulting from the wind action. Usually the wind velocity profile from which these loads result is influenced by the roughness height factor associated with the urban areas surrounding the building. In the vicinity of other tall buildings, the interinfluences between the buildings must also be ascertained. Following the request of the project developer, the Technical University of Civil Engineering Bucharest through the Aerodynamics and Wind Engineering Laboratory “Constantin Iamandi” performed wind tunnel static tests of the residential complex using two different roughness heights above the floor of the wind tunnel (corresponding to different terrain categories with respect to wind orientation) and adding models of the existing adjacent tall buildings for some of the wind directions. The paper presents test methodologies used, the wind tunnel set-up, the residential complex static model and obtained results.