Effects of turbulence intensity and exterior geometry on across-wind aerodynamic damping of rectangular super-tall buildings

Across-wind aerodynamic damping ratios are identified from the wind-induced acceleration responses of 15 aeroelastic models of rectangular super-high-rise buildings in various simulated wind conditions by using the random decrement technique. The influences of amplitude-dependent structural damping ratio and natural frequency on the estimation of the aerodynamic damping ratio are discussed and the identifying method for aerodynamic damping is improved at first. Based on these works, effects of turbulence intensity Iu, aspect ratio H/B, and side ratio B/D on the across-wind aerodynamic damping ratio are investigated. The results indicate that turbulence intensity and side ratio are the most important factors that affect across-wind aerodynamic damping ratio, whereas aspect ratio indirectly affects the aerodynamic damping ratio by changing the response amplitude. Furthermore, empirical aerodynamic damping functions are proposed to estimate aerodynamic damping ratios at low and high reduced speeds for rectangular super-high-rise buildings with an aspect ratio in the range of 5 to 10, a side ratio of 1/3 to 3, and turbulence intensity varying from 1.7% to 25%.