Abstract:
In recent years we have seen an exponential increase in the construction of highrise buildings due to the advent of new materials, modern construction technologies
which have paved way for the construction of new type of systems that tend to be
more flexible and slenderer, making them more prone to wind loadings. The building
codes have given an adequate set of guidelines which tend to be more conservative
and are made for the most simplistic cases. However, these guidelines fail to cater
for special cases where the building tends to be irregular, thus giving more
conservative design values and making the overall design more expensive in an
environment where inflation has peaked. Keeping in view with the shortcoming of
the building code, and the numerical simulations, this research aims to
experimentally determine the actual wind pressure coefficients that act on the façade
of the building using the wind tunnel test which are less time consuming and can be
done for a variety of situations. This novel research has highlighted the need for
carrying out the wind tunnel testing of high-rise buildings due to the increase in the
construction of high-rise irregular shaped buildings in Pakistan. For this purpose,
Gulberg Greens, Islamabad was selected as the prime location where a series of highrise buildings are being constructed. The wind profile for this location was analyzed
and the wind profile was simulated using firstly the empirical equations as provided
in the literature, which was later validated using Computational Fluid Dynamics
(CFD) simulations. The simulations were also later on confirmed for wind profiles
using a handheld anemometer. This project involves the construction of a scaled
down building model which was later equipped with ARDUINO UNO-Nano based
pressure sensors to determine the static pressures which was correspondingly used
to determine the pressure coefficients. The results of the research were very
promising where we found that the pressure coefficient acting on the building were
0.705, 0.766 and 0.791 which are Lower than the one used in the design of the
building by empirical means.
