Wind interference effects of a ventilated supertall building on its neighboring supertall building—A case study

Abstract

Summary Opening ventilating holes on a supertall building is an effective way to reduce its wind‐induced structural response and enhance its wind‐resistant performance. However, its interference effect on the neighboring supertall buildings has seldom been studied yet. Taking two actual neighboring buildings, the Guangdong International Financial Center (IFC) and the Guangzhou Chow Tai Fook Finance Centre (CTF) as examples, this study carried out high‐frequency force balance wind tunnel tests to investigate the interference effect of the IFC's ventilating openings on the wind‐induced response of CTF. Results show that when CTF is located in the downstream area of IFC, the ventilating openings on IFC make the high‐energy frequency band of the power spectral density (PSD) of CTF's crosswind aerodynamic load offset obviously towards the lower frequency interval. Consequently, the wind‐induced response of CTF can be significantly magnified or minified depending on the reduced structural natural frequencies. Since the reduced natural frequency for the structural base bending moment computation is usually smaller than that for the acceleration response computation, ventilation openings on IFC can be advantageous to the crosswind base bending moment response relevant to structural safety design, and disadvantageous to the acceleration response relevant to occupant comfort assessment.