Full-and model scale study of wind effects on a medium-rise building in a built up area

The present study deals with full- and model scale study of wind effects on a medium-rise building in a built up area. Most low-rise building experiments have been based on an isolated building placed in a relatively uniform terrain. Similarly, the very tall buildings often extend out from their environment in a similar fashion. However, buildings are constructed in various shapes and placed in different types of terrain and topography. Therefore, despite a number of studies made in the past, there are still problems that remain unsolved. As the majority of office- and residential buildings in populated areas fall in the intermediate height category, it should be of interest to examine the wind effects acting upon such a building, as well as its dynamic response. For this purpose, an experimental program was initiated utilizing a combination of full-scale measurements and wind tunnel studies, where the fluctuating wind actions are evaluated from recorded simultaneous point pressure fluctuations. Recent improvements in experimental techniques and data handling enable a more detailed information gathering that should eventually lead to an improved understanding of the pressure field around buildings. The investigation studies, experimentally, the wind induced dynamic loading and response of a multi-story building of intermediate height. The presented work evolves on one hand around experimental data acquisition in both full- and model scale, whereas on the other it evolves around basic data reduction, understanding and interpretation of the acquired data. The objective of the study is, in a way, to attempt to provide a sound wind loading chain a la Davenport [29], in the form of data that would facilitate the study of the links connecting the main parameters i.e. Wind – Load – Response. This entails the definition of the relevant wind parameters, the description of the aerodynamic loading process, such as the time-dependent variations of pressure fluctuations on the building surface, and an investigation of the wind induced response of a medium-rise building. Information on the study-building and the experimental setup and procedures is given, for both full-scale and model scale. The full-scale and model scale data are systematically compared through the evaluation of descriptive parameters of both wind turbulence and surface pressures. In general, the evaluated full-scale parameters are found to be in qualitatively good agreement with the model scale parameters. However, the investigation revealed some characteristic differences between full-scale and model scale behavior. These differences are largely related to the fact that significant variability is found to be inherent in the full-scale data, whereas considerably less variability seems to be associated with the wind tunnel data.