Experimental and Numerical Study of Wind-Pressure Distribution on Irregular-Plan-Shaped Building

Abstract

This paper presents a detailed study on an E-plan-shaped (asymmetry about both plan axes) building under wind excitation (wind angles varied from 0° to 330° at an interval of 30°). This study is conducted by the wind-tunnel procedure and by utilizing the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technique numerically. The numerical study is performed using the k-ε and shear stress transport (SST) k-ω models. The pressure contours and mean pressure coefficients of all the faces are computed by both approaches. The results show a good agreement between the experimentally and numerically computed results. The SST k-ω model performed better in comparison with the k-ε model for computing the mean pressure coefficients. The maximum positive and negative mean pressures of some faces of the building are found at skew wind angles. Additionally, a comparative study of the pressure variation with a symmetrical E-plan-shaped building (having the same cross-section area) is conducted in this paper. This study has shown that a drastic increment in the pressure variation is noticed for both the maximum positive and negative mean pressure coefficients due to a small aerodynamic modification.