Effects of Surface-Attached Vertical Ribs on Wind Loads and Wind-Induced Responses of High-Rise Buildings

Abstract

Façade design tends to be diverse with increasing requirements for architectural functions in modern high-rise buildings, leading to various aerodynamic roughness conditions of the building surface. A typical practice is setting vertical ribs on the building façade. This study aims to clarify the effects of vertical ribs on the wind loads and wind-induced responses of high-rise buildings. The models with four vertical rib configurations were tested in the open and suburban exposures using the High-Frequency Force Balance (HFFB) technique in a wind tunnel. The base overturning moments and corresponding responses are demonstrated and compared between models and exposures. Results show that the vertical ribs with a relative width of 4% can not only reduce the mean force coefficients in the along-wind direction but also attenuate the cross-wind vibration by disrupting the regular vortex shedding. Moreover, the half-distributed and full-distributed rib configurations have almost indistinguishable benefit, indicating that the ribs in the corner region of the building façade play a dominant role in reducing the wind-induced responses. Although the cross-wind responses of the building would be less severe in the suburban exposure than those in the open exposure, the reduction rate of the wind-induced responses by the vertical ribs remains almost unchanged.

A Numerical Method for Conformal Mapping of Closed Box Girder Bridges and Its Application

“…During the entire life cycle, bridges can experience violent vibrations and sustain serious damages due to unsteady wind loads [3,4], compromising their structural safety and undermining their sustainability. At present, wind tunnel tests and computational fluid dynamics simulation are the prevailing methods used to determine the wind load on structures [5][6][7]. However, both methods have their limitations: wind tunnel tests can be costly, while CFD simulation is time-consuming.…”

Numerical and Experimental Study on Flow Field around Slab-Type High-Rise Residential Buildings

“…They found that vertical ribs with a relative width of 4% can reduce mean force coefficients in the along-wind direction and attenuate cross-wind vibration by disrupting vortex shedding. Moreover, the ribs in the corner regions of the façade play a dominant role in disrupting vortex shedding [8].…”