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Mean interference effects among tall buildings

ARTICLE in ENGINEERING STRUCTURES JULY 2004
Impact Factor: 1.84 DOI: 10.1016/j.engstruct.2004.03.007

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Engineering Structures 26 (2004) 11731183

www.elsevier.com/locate/engstruct

Mean interference eects among tall buildings

Z.N. Xie a,b, M. Gu a,

a

State Key Laboratory for Disaster Reduction in Civil Engineering, Tongji University, Siping Road 1239, Shanghai 200092,
Peoples Republic of China
b
Department of Civil Engineering, Shantou University, Shantou 515063, Peoples Republic of China
Received 28 June 2003; received in revised form 1 March 2004; accepted 8 March 2004

Abstract
The mean interference eects between two and among three tall buildings are studied by a series of wind tunnel tests. Both the
shielding and channeling eects are discussed to understand the complexity of the multiple-building eects. The results show that
the upstream interfering buildings cause certain shielding eect by decreasing the mean wind load on the downstream principal
building. For buildings of the same height, the shielding eect increases and, therefore, the interference factor (IF) decreases, with
the increase of the breadth of the interfering buildings. However, due to the channeling eects, two adjacent interfering buildings
can signicantly enhance the mean wind load on the principal building. In addition, the variation of the shielding eect is found
to be signicant when the heights of interfering buildings range from 50% to 125% of the height of the principal building. However, higher interfering buildings may cause stronger channeling eects.
# 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Tall buildings; Mean wind loads; Wind tunnel test; Interference eects; Channeling eects

1. Introduction
Generally, the mean interference eects of tall buildings present shielding eects where the presence of
existing nearby buildings (hereafter referred to as interfering buildings) tends to decrease the mean wind load
on the principal building. For a pair of buildings of
equal size in tandem arrangement, Sakamoto and
Haniu [1] found that the drag force of the downstream
building reduced to zero when the upstream building
was three times the building breadth away (center-tocenter spacing) from the downstream building and
the mean drag force could be negative when the
spacing was less than this critical distance. The shielding eect decrease with the increase of the spacing
between the two buildings. However, Taniike [2] found
that the shielding eects could be still noticeable when
the upstream building was located at a place 16 times
of the building breadth away from the downstream
building. In his paper, he indicated a mean interference
factor of 0.8, or, a shielding of 20% of mean wind

Corresponding author. Tel./fax: +86-21-65981210.

E-mail address: minggu@mail.tongji.edu.cn (M. Gu).

0141-0296/$ - see front matter # 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.engstruct.2004.03.007

loads on the principal building. However, due to the

channeling eect, the interference factors can be greater
than 1.0 in some special arrangements of the buildings.
In other words, the adjacent buildings can also amplify
the mean wind loads acting on the principal building.
Some recent studies aimed at providing the general
recommendations on the wind-induced interference
eects. On the basis of the existing wind tunnel test
results, English and Fricke [3] employed a well-trained
neural network to predicate the interference eects
between pairs of buildings located in proximity in a
variety of geometric congurations and boundary-layer
wind ows. Khanduri et al. [4] also tried to give the
general guidelines of wind-induced interference eects
between two buildings. Kwok [5] made a review on this
topic. In his paper, he summarized along-wind and
across-wind and torsional interference factors between
two buildings, and analyzed mechanism of the interference. However, due to the huge amount of experimental workload and the complexity of the interrelated
parameters, most previous investigations have mainly
focused on the interference eects between two buildings, that is, one interfering building and one principal
building. Only a few studies on the interference eects

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Z.N. Xie, M. Gu / Engineering Structures 26 (2004) 11731183

among three buildings have been reported which

showed that the interference eects among three buildings could be more signicant than those between two
buildings [6].
This paper focuses mainly on the behaviors of the
mean interference eects among three buildings. The
mean interference eects in the present study are represented as the interference factor (IF) dened as:
Mean base moment of a building
with interfering buildings present
IF
1
Mean base moment of an isolated building
Furthermore, only the interference eects of the
mean along-wind base moment are considered in this
study since the mean across-wind base moment can be
neglected for an isolated building with square section.
In fact, there are two main kinds of eects involved in
the wind-induced interference eects on tall buildings,
namely, the mean interference eects and the dynamic
interference eects. Previous studies have shown that
the dynamic interference eects are more signicant
and more severe than the mean eects. This paper
focuses on the mean interference eects. The studies of
the dynamic interference eects among three buildings
will be discussed in another paper.
2. Experiment setup and data processing
Wind tunnel tests were conducted in the STDX-1
Boundary Wind Tunnel of the Department of Civil
Engineering at Shantou University. The main test section of STDX-1 for the building model is 20 m long,
3 m wide and 2 m high. The test section has an adjustable roof that provides a negligible pressure gradient in
the downstream direction. The maximum wind speed
of the wind tunnel can reach to 45 m/s. According to
the Chinese Load Code (GB50009-2001 [7]), the
exposure categories B and D (corresponding to exponents of the power law of mean speed prole of 0.16
and 0.30, respectively) are simulated at a length scale
of 1/400 by setting spires, barriers, and rough elements
in the test area. The simulated mean wind proles
(V =Vg ) and turbulence intensity distributions e (%) for
the two exposure categories are shown in Fig. 1, where
Vg is the mean wind speed at the gradient wind height.
The gradient heights for the exposure categories B and
D are 350 and 450 m, respectively; and accordingly
those of the simulated wind elds in the wind tunnel
are 0.875 and 1.125 m, respectively. In order to make a
comparison and investigate the mechanism of the interference eects, some congurations were tested in uniform ow in which the turbulence intensity e is less
than 1%.
The measurements in this study are carried out by
means of a Nittas universal forcemoment sensor
model no. UFS-4515A100 and the attached signal con-

Fig. 1. Distributions of wind prole and longitudinal turbulence

intensity.

ditioner and amplier. The technical specications of

the sensor used are shown in Table 1.
The lowest natural frequency of the model-balance
systems can reach up to 112 Hz, which is much higher
than the concerned frequency range of the aerodynamic forces acting on the building models. The conditioned and amplied analog signal is transmitted to a
Scanivalves Zoc/EIM-16 module and eventually digitized by Scanivalves sampling platform.
A 600 mm tall and 100 mm wide, square model
made from foamed plastics as a core and light wood
plate (1 mm thickness) as clothes is used as the principal building. The model has the same length scale
with that of wind simulation, i.e., 1/400, representing a
real building of a height of 240 m. Two groups of
upstream building models are used as the interfering
buildings. The rst group of interfering buildings has
the same height h as the principal building, where h
(=600 mm) is the height of the principal building
model, and square cross-sections with dierent
breadths of 0.5b, 0.75b, 1b, 1.5b, and 2.0b, where b
Table 1
Specications of Nittas UFS-4515A100 sensor
Component

Full scale range

Fx, Fy

440 N

Fz

880 N

Mx, My, Mz

51 Nm

Accuracy
Linearity: 0.2% F.S.
Hysteresis: 0.2% F.S.

Z.N. Xie, M. Gu / Engineering Structures 26 (2004) 11731183

1175

used to analyze the interference characteristics and

model the interference eects by the ANN-based
method. With the help of this software, the interference
factors at various positions can be calculated and
visualized quickly and accurately by modeling the test
data.
3. Experimental results and discussions
3.1. Results for two identical square buildings
and comparison with previous studies

Fig. 2.

View of the principal building and the interfering buildings.

English [8] synthesized several existing wind tunnel

test results that were obtained for dierent simulated
terrains and concluded a regression equation to predict
the mean along-wind interference factor of the downstream building for twin buildings arranged in tandem.
The formula is given in the polynomial form as:
IF 0:05 0:65x 0:29x2  0:24x3

Fig. 3. xy coordinate grid for locating the interfering buildings,

principal building is xed at (0, 0).

(=100 mm) is the breadth of the principal building

model. The second group of interfering buildings has
the same cross-section as the principal building but different heights of 0.5h, 0.75h, 1h, 1.25h and 1.5h. All
building models are orientated with one face normal to
the wind direction and the spacing between them varies
as the test parameters in the along-wind direction (x)
and the across-wind direction (y) in a grid system
shown in Figs. 2 and 3, respectively. More than 7400
cases of building arrangements were tested in the
present study.
In order to quickly process the huge amount of test
data, a system of Windows-based software platform
that integrates the radial basis function-based articial
neural network (ANN), statistical analysis and database management is developed. All the interference factors from the tests can easily be stored in the database
with the software. The software system can also be

where x logSh b=hb, S is the clear spacing

between the two buildings, b is the breadth of the
buildings, and h is the height of the buildings.
To check the reliability of the results of the present
tests, the interference factors of two tandem-arranged
buildings under the uniform ow condition, exposure
categories B and D, are compared with Eq. (2), as
shown in Fig. 4. The comparison shows a good agreement between the results measured in exposure category D and the regression results from Eq. (2).
However, dierences are found in exposure category B,
and especially in uniform ow. It can be seen that the
deviation of the interference factors decrease with the
increase of building spacing in the dierent categories
of terrains. The maximum dierence is found in the
spacing of 3b to 6b. The smoother the upstream ter-

Fig. 4. Interference factors for two tandem-arranged buildings, x

denotes the center-to-center spacing between the interfering building
and the principal building.

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Z.N. Xie, M. Gu / Engineering Structures 26 (2004) 11731183

Table 2
Comparison of the IFs of twin-building conguration
Interfering building at (x, y)

(5b, 1.5b)

(5b, 2.5b)

(5b, 4b)

(8b, 0)

(8b, 1.5b)

(5b, 2.5b)

(8b, 4b)

Khanduri et al. [9]

Huang [11]
Present study

0.78
0.74
0.73

0.90
0.98
0.96

1.0
1.03
1.03a

0.57
0.63
0.57

0.74
0.71
0.64

0.86
0.93
0.88

0.99
1.00
1.02a

Denotes extrapolation, see Fig. 3.

rain, the more signicant the shielding eects of the

upstream building. In addition, interference factors of
zero are seen in the gure at about 2b, 3b and 4b for
the three types of terrains, respectively. The position of
the zero value in exposure category B with a 0:16 is
at a center-to-center spacing of 3b, that is almost the
same as that of the result observed by Sakamoto and
Haniu [1] under the similar terrain condition of open
terrain.
For the results of other building arrangements,
Khanduri et al. [9] gave the IFs caused by an upstream
building at the region of [2b8b, 04b] in open terrain
by means of synthesizing the results given by Taniike
and Inaoka [10] and Saunders and Melbourne [6].
Huang [11] also conducted some similar experiments in
the same terrain of exposure category B. Table 2 lists
the above-mentioned results, together with the corresponding results that are predicted by the well-trained
neural network with the test data from the present
study. The results show the good consistency and the
eciency of the ANN-based method presented in this
paper. Of course, dierences still can be found in the
table due to the use of dierent terrain categories and
building aspect ratios in dierent studies.
Fig. 5 presents the IF contours for the two equal size
buildings in uniform ow and exposure categories B
and D. Clearly, the shielding eects vary with the
degree of roughness of the upstream terrain. One can
see that each contour has a negative region corresponding to the negative IF, which means that the
principal building is subjected to a reverse wind drag
force. The negative IF region increases with the
smoothness of the upstream terrain.
3.2. Results for congurations of three equal size
buildings
3.2.1. Tandem arrangement
Compared with the mean interference eects of two
tandem-arranged buildings, the mean interference
eects of the three tandem-arranged buildings (an
arrangement of three buildings placed on behind the
other in the along-wind direction, i.e. yA 0 and yB
0 for the two interfering buildings, see Fig. 3) are more
signicant than those of other kinds of arrangements.
Fig. 6 gives the distribution of the interference factors
for three tandem-arranged buildings in exposure cate-

gory B. It can be seen that the minimum interference

factor is close to zero at smaller building spacing,
which is slightly dierent from that of two-building
congurations where IF equals to 0.2. In general, the
shielding eects are dominated by the nearer upstream
interfering building, especially at smaller spacing. Similar trends can be found for this conguration in
exposure category D.
3.2.2. Side-by-side arrangement
Table 3 gives the interference factors of the three
buildings in side-by-side conguration, where yA and
yB denote respectively the across-wind center-to-center
spacing, i.e. the across-wind coordinates dened in
Fig. 3, of the two interfering buildings and the principal building. It can be seen from the table that when
the two interfering buildings are located at the same
side of the principal building, they still can produce
shielding eects on the principal building, resulting in
an IF of 0.94. However, adverse eects of IF > 1 can
be found for most of the arrangements and the
maximum IF is found to be 1.10 when the two interfering buildings are located at yA 3:2b and
yB 3:2b, respectively. This indicates that the two
symmetrically located interfering buildings can increase
10% or even more wind load on the middle principal
building, that is to say, the channeling eect in this
case is more signicant than that of the two buildings
in side-by-side arrangement.
3.2.3. Staggered arrangement
For the interference eects of three buildings, four
variables (i.e. two x-coordinates and two y-coordinates
of the two interfering buildings) are included in each of
the congurations and the results are very dicult to
be expressed with simple contours. In this study, a substitute scheme is used to analyze the multi-variable test
results by xing one interfering building (model A) at a
certain position and varying the spacing between the
other interfering building (model B) and the principal
building. An example is shown in Fig. 7 where the
building model A is xed at (6.1b, 2.4b).
In order to compare the interference factors of the
three-building conguration with those of the twobuilding conguration, model A is considered as an
additional interfering building to the two-building conguration where the interference eects have been

Z.N. Xie, M. Gu / Engineering Structures 26 (2004) 11731183

1177

Fig. 5. IF contours for the conguration of two equal size buildings in dierent upstream terrains. (a) Uniform ow; (b) exposure category B; (c)
exposure category D.

shown in Fig. 5b. It can be found from the comparison

results in Figs. 7 and 5b that the introduction of model
A increases the most signicant shielding region of
IF 0:4 in the two-building conguration, with the
maximum longitudinal spacing changing from 5b to
about 6b. The slight shielding region of 0:8 < IF 1 is
also broadened with the introduction of model A.
These results indicate that the shielding eects are
enhanced in the three-building conguration.
However, the above-mentioned distribution in Fig. 7
is just a local description of the interference eects of
three-building congurations and cannot give the complete information of the interference eects for the conguration. Statistics analysis for a thorough description
of the interference eects is therefore needed and the
results are shown in Fig. 8, where p represents the per-

centage of the positions of the corresponding interference factor over the whole test positions of the
congurations. From this gure, one can see that p is
35% when IF is about equal to 1.0 for the two-building
conguration, but only about 13% for the three-building conguration. In general, for dierent levels of
IF 0:9, the value of p of three-building conguration
is greater than that of two-building conguration.
These results once again indicate that the shielding
eects of three-building conguration are more signicant than two-building conguration. However, due to
the channeling eect, the IF is found to be about 1.1
for 2% of the complete set of interfering building
arrangements, as shown in Fig. 8. That means that
there may be static amplication due to the existence
of two nearby interfering buildings.

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Z.N. Xie, M. Gu / Engineering Structures 26 (2004) 11731183

Fig. 6.

Interference factors of the three equal size and tandem-arranged buildings in exposure category B.

3.2.4. Channeling eect

The channeling eect was mentioned in ASCE 7-98
[12] and other literature [13], but it has not been discussed in any detail in the previous studies. The reason
may partly be that this kind of eect is insignicant,
compared with the above-mentioned shielding eects.
However, the maximum IF is 1.04 in the present test in
the two-building conguration when the interfering
building is located side-by-side at (0, 3.2b). For the
conguration of three equal size buildings, the
maximum IF can increase up to 1.10 when the two
interfering buildings are located at (0,
3.2b).
Fig. 9 presents the IF distributions from the present
test for the two interfering buildings at y
3:2b in
exposure categories B and D. The most signicant
interfering positions in the two categories of terrain are
found to be the same. From Fig. 9, one can see that
two side-by-side upstream interfering buildings produce
almost no static amplication eect on the principal
building. Only when one of the two interfering buildTable 3
Mean interference eects for side-by-side arrangement in exposure
category B
yA

yB

IF

3.2b
3.2b
3.2b
3.2b
2.4b
2.4b
1.6b

1.6b
1.6b
2.4b
3.2b
1.6b
2.4b
1.6b

0.94
1.04
1.09
1.10
1.04
1.06
1.04

ings is located side-by-side with the principal building

and the other one is arranged upstream, the interference factor can be 1.04, the same as that of the
two-building conguration; and the region where
IF  1:04 in exposure category B is much larger than
that in category D. It can be concluded that the channeling eect could be more signicant in the smoother
terrain.
3.3. Eects of breadth ratio
To investigate the eects of the breadth ratio (hereafter referred to as Br) of across-section of the interfering buildings to the principal building on the
interference eects, ve types of interfering building
models with dierent breadths are tested. These interfering models have the same height as the principal
building model but with dierent breadths. The
breadth ratios adopted in the test are 0.5, 0.75, 1.0, 1.5
and 2.0. The results are discussed in the following.
3.3.1. Two-building conguration
Generally, larger Br of interfering building produces
stronger shielding eects. In most of the interfering
positions, the interference factor decreases with the
increase of Br. However, due to the channeling eect
discussed in the previous sections, the interfering building with side-by-side arrangement can produce adverse
static amplication eects on the principal building.
These adverse eects can also increase with the increase
of Br. Fig. 10 presents the variation of this adverse
interference eects with respect to dierent breadths of

Z.N. Xie, M. Gu / Engineering Structures 26 (2004) 11731183

1179

Fig. 7. Variations of the interference factor vs. the relative positions of interfering building model B for interfering building model A xed at
(6.1b, 2.4b) in exposure category B.

the interfering buildings located at (0, 3.2b), i.e. in

side-by-side arrangement with the principal building. It
might be anticipated that a parabolic relationship exists
between IF and Br. A maximum value of IF 1:16 is
recorded when Br 2, as shown in Fig. 10. This indicates that the interfering building with Br 2 can
increase 16% mean wind load on the principal building
when the center-to-center spacing of the two buildings
is 3.2b.
3.3.2. Three-building conguration
More interfering buildings generally produce more
signicant shielding eects, and the shielding eects
increase with the increase of Br. The statistical properties for the interferences eects of ve types of interfering buildings are shown in Fig. 11. From this gure,
one can see that the most notable shielding region
of IF 0:4 increases quickly with the increase of Br

while the regions of 0:5 IF 0:9 remain unchanged

relatively.
The increase of the building size could also enhance
the adverse static amplication on the principal building when the two interfering buildings are located at
some critical locations. For the ve types of breadths
of interfering buildings, the critical position for both of
the two interfering buildings are found to be about
(0,
3.2b) in the present test grid region shown in
Fig. 3. The corresponding maximum interference factors for dierent Br in exposure category B are listed in
Table 4. The table shows that the maximum IF increases with Br, and a maximum value of 1.195 is found for
the interfering buildings of Br 2. This indicate that
the two symmetrically located larger sized interfering
buildings of Br 2 can increase 20% wind load on the
middle principal building.
3.4. Eects of height ratio
To investigate the eects of the height ratio (hereafter referred to as Hr) of the interfering buildings to
the principal building on the interference eects, ve
types of interfering building models with dierent
heights were tested. These interfering building models
have the same breadth of that of the principal building
model but dierent heights. The height ratios for the
test are 0.5, 0.75, 1.0, 1.25, and 1.5.

Fig. 8. Comparison of the distribution of the interference eects

between the congurations of two and three equal size buildings in
exposure category B.

3.4.1. Two-building conguration

Fig. 12 shows the eects of Hr on the interference
eects for the two-building conguration. The results
show that the interfering building with Hr 0:5 produced insignicant shielding eects; on the other hand,
heights greater than 1.25 produce similar interference
eects. This means that the shielding eects of the

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Z.N. Xie, M. Gu / Engineering Structures 26 (2004) 11731183

Fig. 10. Interference factors vs. breadth ratios of interfering buildings located at (0, 3.2b) in exposure category B.

Fig. 11. Comparison of the distribution of the interference eects of

dierent breadth ratio congurations (three-building congurations,
exposure category B).

Fig. 9. IFs distributions of three-building conguration for two

interfering buildings A and B xed at yA 3:2b and yB 3:2b. (a)
Exposure category B; (b) exposure category D.

interfering building with Hr 0:5 could be neglected,

while the interference eects are almost the same when
Hr  1:25. So the mean interference eects may only be
sensitive to the height ratio in the range
0:5 Hr 1:25. However, for Hr  1:25, the channeling eects become signicant than those of the case
with Hr 1.
3.4.2. Three-building conguration
More interfering buildings generally enhance the
shielding eects. Fig. 13 presents the statistical distribu-

tions of interference eects for the cases of the two

interfering buildings with dierent height ratios in
exposure category B. The results show that two lower
interfering buildings of Hr 0:5 produce insignicant
interference eects, with most of the interference factors being within the range [0.9, 1.0] in exposure category B. Also, the interference eect of these two lower
Table 4
Maximum IF for dierent interfering building size due to channeling
eects (three-building congurations, exposure category B)
Br

Maximum IF

0.5
0.75
1.0
1.5
2.0

1.03
1.05
1.10
1.15
1.195

Z.N. Xie, M. Gu / Engineering Structures 26 (2004) 11731183

1181

Fig. 12. Comparison of the distribution of the interference eects of

dierent height ratio congurations (two-building conguration,
exposure category B).

interfering buildings becomes even less signicant in

the higher turbulence of exposure category D. The
results indicate that the eects of interfering building
with a height less than 0.5h can be neglected. Only
when the heights of the interfering buildings are greater
or equal to 0.75h does shielding eects become notable.
In contrast to the signicant change in interference
factors for interfering buildings with Hr 0:5; 0:75
and 1:0, factors for interfering buildings with Hr
1:0; 1:25 and 1:5 vary only marginally. However, as
indicated in Fig. 13, a slight dierence for IF 0:7
between the conguration of Hr 1 and that of Hr >
1 in exposure category B is found. It shows that the
shielding eects of the two interfering buildings with
Hr 1 are greater than those of the two interfering
buildings with Hr > 1. Fig. 14 presents the variations
of the IF with respect to the height ratios of the interfering buildings when the two interfering buildings are
located at (6.1b, 1.6b) and (6.1b, 1.6b), respectively.
From this gure, one can see that the interference
factors decrease rapidly with the increase of Hr in the
range from 0.5 to 1.0, but for interfering buildings of
Hr  1, the interference factors increase marginally

Fig. 13. Comparison of the distribution of the interference eects of

dierent height ratio congurations (three-building congurations,
exposure category B).

Fig. 14. Interference eects of dierent height ratios while two

upstream interfering buildings are located at (6.1b,
1.6b).

with the increase of Hr. It can be also found from

Fig. 14 that the shielding eects in smoother terrain of
exposure category B are more signicant than those in
category D.
Based on the above results, it can be summarized
that the sensitive height of interfering buildings for the
mean interference eects are in the range from 0.5h to
1.25h, while the interference eects remain almost the
same for higher interfering buildings. However, higher
interfering buildings cause stronger channeling eect,
and the static amplication may increase with the
increase of the height of the interfering buildings.
A maximum value of 1.13 of IF is recorded when the
two interfering buildings with Hr 1:5 are located at
(0,
1.6b) in terrain category D.
3.5. Simplication of the results for three-building
in arbitrary congurations
Since four variables, i.e. two x-coordinates and two
y-coordinates of the two interfering buildings, are
involved in the analysis of the interference eects of
three-building congurations, the interference factors
cannot be simply expressed in a single contour as in the
two-building cases. The problem is how to deduce a
relatively simple and yet precise enough representation
method for practical applications from the complex
data from the wind tunnel tests. A reduced interference
factor (RIF) contour for three-building conguration is
thus proposed by synthesizing the eects over the
whole test domain.
Let PA(x,y) and PB(x,y) be the location coordinates
of two interfering buildings; the interference factor can
then be expressed as
IF f PA ;PB ;

PA ;PB 2 X

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Z.N. Xie, M. Gu / Engineering Structures 26 (2004) 11731183

where X denotes the whole position domain of the

interfering buildings in the test. Simplifying the above
four-variable problem to a lower two-variable one, the
so-called RIF can be expressed as
RIF gPA max f PA ;PB
PB 2X

From Eq. (4), the reduced interference factor, RIF,

can easily be expressed by a simple contour in the similar way of the two-building conguration. From
Eq. (4), it can also be seen that a RIF value is always
greater than or equal to the corresponding IF. In order
to make the estimated interference factor in terms of
Eq. (4) close to the real one, i.e., IF, the interference
factor for practical purpose may be determined by the
following equation

IF mingPA ;gPB

Of course, the calculated result from Eq. (5) will

also

be greater than or equal to that of Eq. (3), i.e. IF  IF.
However, from the practical point of view, interference
factors dened by Eq. (5) are conservative.
Based on the above denitions, Fig. 15 shows the
distributions of the RIF for the conguration of three
identical buildings in exposure categories B and D,
respectively. Distributions of only half of the region are
drawn in the gure due to the symmetry of the RIF.

Fig. 15 also shows the shielding eects in exposure

category B are stronger than those in category D.
Meanwhile, stronger channeling eects can also be seen
in exposure category B, that is to say, the maximum
static amplication in exposure category B is more serious than that in category D.
An example is shown here to explain briey how to
apply Eqs. (4) and (5) in practical use. For two interfering buildings A and B located at PA 4b;  b and PB
9b;  2b in exposure category B, one can obtain two
RIFs of gPA 0:81 and gPB 0:87 by interpolating from the distribution of the RIFs shown in Fig. 15a.
Then according to Eq. (5), the interference factor for

this conguration is IF min0:81;0:87 0:81.

4. Concluding remarks
The mean interference eects between two and
among three buildings with dierent congurations
have been studied by a series of detailed wind tunnel
tests. A good agreement between the current study and
the existing results in two-building congurations is
found, which ensures the reliability of the results and
conclusions proposed in the present study. For interference eects of three-building congurations, the
interference factor is simplied to an easier expressed
RIF to simplify the experiment results. The main
results are summarized as follows.

Fig. 15. The RIFs of three equal size building conguration. (a) Exposure category B; (b) exposure category D.

Z.N. Xie, M. Gu / Engineering Structures 26 (2004) 11731183

1. Generally, the eects of the upstream building(s)

show shielding eects and the corresponding mean
interference factors are less than 1.0. But the static
amplications, due to the channeling eects, could
also lead to an increase of 10% of the mean wind
load on the principal building when the two equal
size interfering buildings are located at (0,
3.2b),
or, in other words, the three buildings are arranged
side-by-side. The observed maximum increase of the
mean wind load can be 20% depending on the section size and spacing of the buildings.
2. The interference eects are sensitive to the breadth
of the interfering buildings. Larger upstream buildings could produce more shielding eects on the
principal building and, meanwhile, side-by-side
interfering buildings with larger size can produce
more serious channeling eect on the principal
building.
3. The height of the interfering buildings could also
aect the wind load on the principal building. The
results show that interference from lower interfering
buildings with Hr 0:5 is negligible while the sensitive height ratio of interfering buildings is in the
range from 0.5 to 1.25. For higher buildings, the
shielding eect is constant. However, higher interfering building may cause stronger channeling eects
and the static amplications will increase with the
increase of the heights of the interfering buildings.
Due to the complex of the problem, the above discussions and conclusions on the eects of the geometry
of interfering buildings are still in the qualitative level.
More tests and eorts are therefore needed to improve
the understanding in this area.

Acknowledgements
This research is jointly supported by the National
Science Foundation (50321003), the Foundation for
University Key Teachers by the Ministry of Education,

1183

and the Science Foundation of Guangdong Province

(010455). They are gratefully acknowledged.

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