Experimental study of the neighborhood effects on the mean wind loading over two equivalent high-rise buildings

Abstract

This paper presents a series of results with respect to the mean values of shear, base moment and torsion acting in a building obtained through an ex‐ perimental wind tunnel study using the standard building proposed by the Commonwealth Advisory Aeronautical Research Council ሺCAARCሻ as build‐ ing reference. In the loading determination, the interference of a neighbor‐ ing building with similar geometric characteristics to the CAARC was simu‐ lated, considering variations of positioning and spacing in relation to the ref‐ erence building. It was concluded that the presence of the neighboring build‐ ing increased the mean loads in the reference building for a significant num‐ ber of directions considered. In the case of the considered deviations and the proposed provisions by this study, it was concluded that the vicinity factor that would contemplate the majority of the results obtained in the tests should increase the wind loads by at least 60% in relation to the values ob‐ tained for the building reference considered in isolation.