Title: Wind action analysis in outstanding buildings. Case study of Hotel Vela at Barcelona

Author(s): Ortega Cornejo, M.; Lacoma Aller, L. M.; Holman, D. M.

Publication: ACHE

Volume: 60

Issue: 251

Appears on pages(s): 37 - 64

Keywords: Wind actions, Eurocodes, Spanish Technical Code for Buildings, pressure coefficients, wind tunnel, computer particle models.

DOI:

Date: 1/1/2009

Abstract:
The architecture?s development in the design of singular buildings, with the domain of the knowledge of the structures? response and the advance of the constructive process, are permitting the design of more complex buildings with special sections and shapes that require a detailed analysis concerned to the response against the wind forces. Until the recent publication of the new Spanish Technical Code for Buildings (CTE-2006), the Spanish current regulation of wind action on Buildings (NBE-AE-88), defined equivalent wind forces below the values of other more modern codes like the own Spanish Technical Code for Buildings, the Spanish Instruction of Actions for Road Bridges IAP-98 or the Eurocodes. Investigaciones y Estudios This article analyzes the different wind action codes, particularizing to Barcelona?s ?Hotel Vela?, building designed by Ricardo?s Bofill ?Taller de Arquitectura?, for which IDEAM has realized the structural project, incising in the importance of the calculus of the force coefficients. For singular buildings like ?Hotel Vela?, the direct application of the codes for the calculation of the pressure coefficient could give way to an over dimensioning or infra dimensioning of the wind forces, that?s why it is frequently to support it?s analysis experimentally by means of a wind tunnel test. A very recent alternative to the wind tunnel test is the computer modelling of the wind forces by means of particles models, which permit to obtain with great precision the force coefficients, as well as the maximum pressures and suctions in the structure.