Performance-Based Design of High-Rise Buildings for Occupant Comfort

Abstract

This paper introduces a framework for the performance-based design (PBD) of high-rise buildings with respect to the occupant comfort performance objective. The performance is expressed in terms of the probability—conditional on the wind event intensity—that the fraction of the building occupants on one floor that perceive the motion is greater than a chosen threshold value. The framework is fully probabilistic, and numerous uncertainties affecting both the structural response and the human perception threshold are considered in the assessment of the exceedance probability. In addition, a new database-enabled online analysis module based on the proposed PBD framework [Performance-Based Data-Enabled Design module for Occupant Comfort (PBDED-OC)] is presented. The PBDED-OC allows the assessment of the occupant comfort performance of a tall building by taking advantage of databases of high-frequency base balance measurements or by adopting specific user-supplied wind tunnel data and is envisaged to be particularly useful during the preliminary design phase.