Modification of aerodynamic force characteristics on high-rise buildings with arrangement of vertical plates

The effects of vertical splitter plates attached to the facades of high-rise building on the wind loads were investigated in details, based on a series of wind tunnel experiments. The rigid models with pressure taps were adopted, and totally one reference model and 16 models with different appurtenances configurations simulated by thin vertical splitter plates were studied. The testing results indicate that vertical plates can greatly affect the mean and fluctuating pressure on the building, the along-wind and across-wind layer forces and base moment. Continuous and stagger arranged vertical plates can significantly decrease the layer forces at the wind direction of 0 degrees and the largest decrement of fluctuating across-wind layer force can reach 57.3%. It is also found that the back-to-back arrangement of vertical plates has the best effects on reducing fluctuating across-wind base moment with largest decrement of 51.3%. The reason of such results is further discussed in this study. According to the aerodynamic force spectra, the peaks of power spectra of models equipped with plates become lower than smooth surface model. The correlation coefficients of layer force along the building height and phase-plane trajectories of base moment are also examined.