Dynamic Wind Load Combination for a Tall Building Based on Copula Functions

Dynamic wind loads on tall buildings can be decomposed into three components, i.e. two translational components and one torsional component. When one component reaches its maximum, the other two components have low probability to take their maximum values. It is common to use combination coefficients for estimating the mean extremes of linearly combined wind loads. The traditional design practice for determining wind load combinations relies partly on some approximate combination rules and lacks a systematic and reliable method. Based on the high frequency force balance (HFFB) testing results, wind loads can be acquired in terms of time history data, which provides necessary information for the more rigorous determination of combination coefficients by probabilistic methods. In this paper, a 3D copula-based approach is proposed for determining the combination coefficients for three stochastic wind loads associated with a specific exceedance probability and a set of 3D realizable equivalent static wind loads (ESWLs) on tall buildings. Using the measured base moment and torque data by the HFFB wind tunnel test, a case study is presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework to determine the dynamic wind load combinations and associated 3D realizable ESWLs on a full-scale 60-story building.