Comparative study between field measurements of wind pressures on a 600-m-high skyscraper during Super Typhoon Mangkhut and wind tunnel test

Wind pressures on cladding of a 600-m-high skyscraper during Super Typhoon Mangkhut were monitored by a synchronous monitoring system including 48 pressure transducers. Then, simultaneous wind pressure measurements on a 1:500 scale model of the skyscraper were conducted in wind tunnel test. The field measurements of wind pressures are further analyzed to investigate the wind pressure characteristics on the skyscraper under extreme windstorm condition and utilized to validate the wind tunnel test results. The full-scale and model-scale wind pressure coefficients (mean, root mean square, maximum and minimum) are compared with each other and analyzed in detail. Moreover, to explore the deviations between the full-scale and model-scale results, the Reynolds number effect (5.5 × 10⁴ to 1.8 × 10⁸) on the wind pressure coefficients, probability distributions, power spectral densities, spatial correlations and coherences of wind pressures are investigated. The comparative study shows that the wind tunnel test can reproduce the wind pressures on the windward face. While for the other faces, the results from the wind tunnel test generally deviate from those from the field measurements. The reasons that caused the discrepancies, especially the Reynolds number effect, are discussed. The objectives of this paper are to examine the accuracy of wind tunnel testing for predicting wind pressures on high-rise buildings under severe wind condition and enhance the understanding of wind pressures on high-rise buildings during strong windstorms, and therefore provide useful information for the wind-resistant design of skyscrapers.