Wind engineering is one of the most important area of concern in the process of designing a tall building. In this article, we will discuss about the Wind Engineering Management in Burj Khalifa. In the process of designing Burj Khalifa, various wind engineering techniques have been considered, so as to control the dynamic response of the tower, The Wind Engineering Management in Burj Khalifa was achieved by:
- varying the shape of the building along the height while continuing the lateral load resisting system and building gravity;
- reducing the floor plan of the Burj Khalifa building along the height, and effectively tapering the profile of the building;
- introducing spoiler type of effects by using the building shapes along the entire height of the Burj Khalifa building, including the pinnacle, in order to reduce the dynamic wind excitations;
stiffening the structure of the building from normal to the worst wind direction, by changing the orientation of the tower in response to wind directionality.
Wind Engineering Management in Burj Khalifa is an outcome of extensive planning and collaboration. The early conceptual sketches of Burj Khalifa demonstrates the impact of varying the shape of the building along with the height from the early development of the design concept, in order to minimize the wind forces on the tower. The variation of the shape, and widt of the building resulted in the wind vortices around the perimeter of the tower which responded differently for different shapes at different frequencies, in this way it helped in disorganizing the interaction of the tower structure with the wind.
Since the initial stages of the project, an extensive wind tunnel testing and study regime was established, in order to develop a complete understanding of the wind behavior and response on the building and to confirm the wind engineering management strategies mentioned above, including the tuning of the natural frequencies of the tower and to optimize the dynamic response against wind excitations.