Estimating the maximum pounding force for steel tall buildings in proximity subjected to wind

Pounding of structures may result in considerable damages, to the extent of total failure during severe lateral loading events (e.g., earthquakes and wind). With the new generation of tall buildings in densely occupied locations, wind-induced pounding becomes of higher risk due to such structures's large deflections. This paper aims to develop mathematical formulations to determine the maximum pounding force when two adjacent structures come into contact. The study will first investigate wind-induced pounding forces of two equal-height structures with similar dynamic properties. The wind loads will be extracted from the Large Eddy Simulation models and applied to a Finite Element Method model to determine deflections and pounding forces. A Genetic Algorithm is lastly utilized to optimize fitting parameters used to correlate the maximum pounding force to the governing structural parameters. The results of the wind-induced pounding show that structures with a higher natural frequency will produce lower maximum pounding forces than those of the same structure with a lower natural frequency. In addition, taller structures are more susceptible to stronger pounding forces at closer separation distances. It was also found that the complexity of the mathematical formula from optimization depends on achieving a more accurate mapping for the trained database.