There is a growing trend to join tall buildings in close proximity by linking through horizontal structural links such as skybridges, skypools and skygardens. They are usually built to great heights in order to achieve a grand appearance, so wind-resistance is one of primary concerns in design practice, particularly in typhoon-prone areas. Because Linked Buildings (LBs) are usually not far away from each other, wind flow around them is susceptible to the interference effect. In addition to modification of wind force magnitude on an LB, therefore, the correlation between wind force components within each building likely differs from that for an isolated building. This correlation is termed the intra-building aerodynamic correlation. Furthermore, due to this link-induced structural coupling, wind forces on the 2 connected buildings should be taken into consideration simultaneously. The correlation in wind force components between the connected buildings, termed the inter-building aerodynamic correlation, plays an important role in determining the wind-induced structural responses. This paper investigates the intra-building and inter-building aerodynamic correlations of LBs. The intra-building aerodynamic correlation is examined using correlation coefficients and trajectories between wind force components within each building. Results show that the intra-building aerodynamic correlations for the LBs differ considerably from that for the isolated building, especially in the correlation between along-wind and torsional force components. Whilst, the inter-building aerodynamic correlation is presented in terms of the correlation coefficients between local wind force components of the two buildings. The along-wind inter-building correlation is found to decrease with increasing gap distance, whereas the variation of cross-wind inter-building correlation is more complicated. In addition, the Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) method is applied to identify the hidden pressure patterns on LBs.
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