Wind tunnel experimental study of Wind pressure distribution on tall buildings considering surrounding interference

Wind loads on buildings in realistic environments may be considerably different from those measured on isolated buildings. Neighboring structures may either decrease or increase the flow-induced forces on the building being considered. In this paper a rigid model wind tunnel test under conventional terrain C wind field was performed to the 1:250 reduced-scale model of a high-rise building with three surrounding buildings for investigating the interference effects of wind-pressure distribution. The wind pressure coefficients under 8 wind directions were measured for the isolated building and the building with three other surroundings. Based on the test data, a detailed comparative study was conducted towards the wind pressure distributions on the building with and without surrounding others. Essential conclusions are as follows: the upstream building can decrease the wind load on downstream building. The shielding effect is related to the height of the disturbing buildings. Wind pressure distributions on the building with and without disturbing buildings tend to be similar above the height of the disturbing buildings.