Grant: Alliance Grants

The continuing growth of tall building construction in Ontario and Canada has increased the need for sustainable urban habitats. Currently, most tall buildings are designed utilizing "specification-based" design method that adheres to construction norms and standards. Although the current "specification-based" design method is easier for application, several studies have highlighted its real-world limitations. Over the past few decades, the Performance-Based Design (PBD) approach has been successfully implemented in seismic design, where the structural system of a building is required to provide the intended performance instead of overtly prescribing how to construct it. However, this is not the case for wind design, which is essential for tall buildings. In collaboration with the industrial partner (i.e., Entuitive), this research project investigates the non-linear behavior of tall buildings under wind actions, which is essential to achieve the performance-based wind design of tall buildings.This will be achieved in 3 milestones as follows: (i) a detailed climate analysis will be conducted for major cities in Ontario, to address the joint probability of high wind speeds and durations, which is essential to identify the length of potential wind storms, (ii) an aerodynamic database will be developed through several wind tunnel pressure tests on typical high rise building shapes, and (iii) structural non-linear dynamic analysis will be conducted using the aerodynamic database in milestone ii considering the storm durations obtained from milestone i to investigate the behavior of tall buildings under wind actions, which is essential to assess the performance based design.