Improved combination method of background component and resonant component of wind loads on high‐rise buildings

• Published in: The structural design of tall and special buildings Vol. 27; no. 13
• Main Authors: Xu, A., Zhao, R.H., Wu, J.R.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 01-09-2018
• Subjects: background response; Buildings; Correlation analysis; high frequency force balance (HFFB); resonant response; tall building; Tall buildings; wind effect; Wind effects; Wind loads; Wind tunnel testing; Wind tunnels; wind‐induced vibration
• ISSN: 1541-7794; 1541-7808
• DOI: 10.1002/tal.1487

Summary
High frequency force balance (HFFB) technique is one of the most widely used approaches for estimating wind effects on super‐tall buildings. The traditional method for computing the equivalent static wind load (ESWL) of HFFB wind tunnel tests usually separately calculates the background ESWL and resonant ESWL and then combines them by using the square root of the sum of the squares method. This method neglects the correlation between the background response and resonant response and consequently provides inaccurate ESWL results. By analyzing the mechanism of the correlation, this paper proposed an improved method by adding an item to the traditional equation to represent such correlation. Two super‐tall building cases, the Guangzhou East Tower (530 m) and the Guangzhou West Tower (432 m), were investigated to examine the validity of the proposed method. Compared with the traditional method, the proposed method provides much more accurate results. The simple but effective method is helpful to researchers and engineering in investigating the wind effects on super‐tall buildings based on HFFB wind tunnel tests.