Monitoring of typhoon effects on a super-tall building in Hong Kong

Abstract

SUMMARY A super‐tall building with height of 420 m and 88 floors is located in central Hong Kong. Field monitoring of wind effects on the high‐rise structure was conducted during the passage of several typhoons on the basis of a wind and movement monitoring system installed in the building. Field data such as wind speed, wind direction, pressures on cladding, acceleration and displacement responses were simultaneously recorded during the typhoons and then analyzed. Typhoon wind parameters including turbulence intensity, gust factor, peak factor, turbulence integral length scale and power spectral density were presented and discussed. The dynamic properties of the high‐rise structure were determined from the field measurements and compared with those calculated at the design stage. The damping ratios of the super‐tall building were evaluated by a random decrement technique, which demonstrates amplitude‐dependent characteristics. The relationships between the structural dynamic responses and the approaching wind speed were analyzed. Wind tunnel tests were conducted to investigate the wind effects on the super‐tall building. The field‐measured acceleration responses were found to be consistent with the model test results. Finally, the serviceability performance of the super‐tall building during the typhoons was assessed on the basis of the field measurement results. The findings of the paper are expected to be of considerable interest and practical use to professionals and researchers involved in wind‐resistant designs of super‐tall buildings. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Investigation of wind load on 1,000 m-high super-tall buildings based on HFFB tests

“…Except traditional aerodynamic treatments used in wind engineering, passive, active, or semiactive structural control device is needed . Furthermore, there are many innovative studies of health monitoring in high‐rise buildings; 1,000 m‐high super‐tall buildings is another important change to apply these techniques.…”

Large-eddy simulation of wind effects on a super-tall building in urban environment conditions

“…Hence, a wind and movement monitoring system has been installed atop the building to monitor the wind effects since 2007. For the detailed introduction of the monitoring system, refer to Li et al (2014) and Yi et al (2013). Moreover, Figure 2 shows the annual wind rose obtained based on the wind data recorded by Hong Kong Observatory from 1981 to 2000 at a weather station near the super-tall building.…”

“…where s B , s R and s T are the RMS background, resonant and total displacement atop the main building, s F is the RMS generalised force, k is the generalised stiffness, z is the critical damping ratio of 1.5% according to the fullscale measurements by Li et al (2014) and Yi et al (2013).…”

“…f 0 is the natural frequency of 0.14 Hz in the x-direction and 0.144 Hz in the y-direction (Li et al, 2014;Yi et al, 2013), S f ( f) is the spectrum of the generalised wind force, the mode shape is taken from the vibration analysis based on the finite element model of the building. In this study, the displacement responses from the GPS atop the tall building were filtered to remove the multipath effects by a high-pass elliptical filter.…”

“…10 super-tall buildings in Hong Kong, mainland China and Taiwan by City University of Hong Kong (CityU; Li et al, 2011;Li, Fang, Jeary, & Wong, 1998;Li, Xiao, & Wong, 2005). Based on the full-scale data collected by CityU (Li, Zhi, Yi, To, & Xie, 2014;Yi, Zhang, & Li, 2013) and with increasing availability of computing resources, this paper presents a large-scale numerical simulation study of wind effects on a super-tall building in complex urban environment with cross-comparison against wind tunnel experimental results and full-scale measurements. The main purpose of this study is to explore a viable and useful approach with LES for accurate estimation of wind effects on tall buildings.…”