Pressure Fluctuations on Tapered and Setback Tall Buildings

Recent tall buildings tend to have unconventional shapes as a prevailing, which is effective for suppressing across-wind responses. Suppression of across-wind responses is a major factor in tall building projects, and the so called aerodynamic modification method is comprehensively used. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the pressure fluctuations on tapered and setback tall buildings, including peak pressures, power spectra and coherences through the synchronous multi-pressure sensing system techniques. And flow measurements around the models were conducted to investigate the condition of vortex shedding. The results show that by tapering and setback, different distributions of mean pressure coefficients at leeward surface were found, which is caused by the geometric characteristics of the models. And the power spectra of wind pressures at sideward surface become wideband and the peak frequencies are different depending on heights, which makes the correlation near the Strouhal component low or even negative. The differences in shedding frequencies were also confirmed by the flow fields around the models.