Numerical Simulation Study On Wind Load Interference Effects On Twin-Tower High-rise Buildings

With the development of science and technology, double-tower or multi-tower high-rise buildings with complicated shapes are emerging in large numbers. Wind resistant design of high-rise buildings encounters new obstacles. In the present, there are many studies on wind loads of isolated high-rise buildings, yet only few studies on the wind loads of multi-tower buildings and its interferences effect have been reported. In the present study, a detailed discussion was made on the wind-induced static interference effects of a complicated shaped double-tower tall building, the Xiaoshan International Trade Building. Further more, the bottleneck effect between the twin towers and the mean interference effect between up-stream and down-stream buildings were also investigated.Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is a new subject being developed in recent 40 years. With the development of computers and computation theory, it has received much recognition and was widely used in the most recent 10 years. Compared with the research method in traditional structural wind engineering, CFD has obvious advantages but also has many problems in practical use. This paper makes a brief introduction of the basic theory and concept of CFD, including the establishment and discrete of universal form of governing equation, the explanations on numerical solutions of flow fields, detailed classifications of turbulence simulation methods, and at last an introduction of near-wall treatment method in turbulence simulation.A wind tunnel test of rigid model has been conducted on the twin-tower building. The test results are expressed in surface integrals form. Results of three dimensional wind resultant forces are proposed for the convenience of engineering application. Three dimensional wind loads of along-wind, across-wind and torsion in different wind directions are studied, and the grouped shape coefficients and local shape coefficients of interferences between the two towers are analyzed, which provide reasonable wind loads in wind resistant designs for twin-tower high-rise buildings.By using CFD method, the twin-tower building was numerically modeled and simulated for its mean wind loads. The numeric simulation results of static mean wind loads and the test results of wind tunnel are compared. Based on the verification of the accuracy of the numeric simulation, a numeric simulation study on bottleneck effects at zero degree of wind direction was conducted to investigate the effects of different distances between the two towers. Then suggestions were proposed on the reduction of the bottleneck effect of the actual twin-tower building.A numeric simulation of interference effects of static wind loads at the wind angle of 90 degrees between up-stream and down-stream twin-tower buildings were conducted in this paper. Several cases of different distances between the twin-tower buildings were numerically simulated to get a total understanding of the numeric wind tunnel in solving problems of static wind load interference effects on complicated shaped up and down-stream structures.