Characteristics of aerodynamic forces and pressures on square plan buildings with height variations

Many studies on reducing across-wind responses of tall buildings have been investigated, mainly focusing on the effect of corner shape. And it is also known that changing section along the height through tapering or set-back could reduce across-wind responses of tall buildings. In this paper, to investigate the mechanism of aerodynamic force reduction, the wind tunnel tests for fluctuating pressure and fluctuating force were carried out. Two models with different tapering ratio of 5% and 10%, one set-backed model and one prototype square prism with side ratio of unity were employed under two typical boundary layers which represent suburban and urban flow condition. It is concluded that tapering or set-back helps to reduce the mean drag force and the fluctuating lift force. Reduction ratio increases as tapering ratio increases, and the set-backed model is more effective to reduce the fluctuating lift force than the tapered model with identical surface area, reducing the coefficients about 40% in suburban flow condition. And by tapering and set-back, the power spectra of wind pressures at sideward surface become wideband and the peak frequencies depend on height, which makes the correlation near the Strouhal component low or even negative.