Rigid and Aeroelastic Analysis of Wind Induced Flow Behavior Around Unscaled Tall Buildings using Numerical Techniques

TL;DR

This paper uses advanced CFD techniques to analyze wind loads on tall buildings, incorporating aeroelastic effects and comparing results with experimental data to improve accuracy in predicting wind-induced behaviors.

Contribution

It introduces a coupled LES fluid-structure interaction model for tall buildings, enhancing the accuracy of wind load predictions over traditional rigid models.

Findings

Coupled LES models better match wind tunnel data than rigid models.

Aeroelastic effects influence pressure distribution and wake formation.

Results depend critically on boundary condition estimations.

Abstract

The study focuses on the wind loads acting on the standard Commonwealth Advisory Aeronautical Council (CAARC) building model. Numerical modeling has been used instead of employing wind tunnel experiments due to the requirement of high physical space. This is mainly due to the superiority of CFD codes included in turbulence models such as RANS and more precise LES. However, the shortcoming arising through basing the result on numerical investigations is compensated by direct comparison to experimental data available in literature. The study extends beyond the typical rigid building structure giving account to the minor deformations resulting from the impact of the wind force on an aeroelastic structure through coupled two-way fluid structure interaction, while designing the building to have its natural fundamental frequency of 0.2 Hz. An improved Smagorinsky-Lily model was used for all LES models and the results were compared with available wind tunnel experimental data. It was found that coupled LES analysis provided better correlation to wind tunnel data compared to rigid fluid domains with respect to pressure distribution and wake formation despite the additional computation time taken. However, all these readings were dependent on the boundary conditions which needs to be estimated concisely fur future use.