Methods for the Efficient Estimation of High-Rise Wind-Excited Structures

This research looks to advance Methods for the Efficient Estimation of the Reliability of Post-Elastic High-Rise Wind-Excited Structures within a Performance-Based Design (PBD) for high-rise buildings.

“Current high-rise structural wind design is hampered by difficulties in efficiently modeling the post-elastic (non-linear) structural behavior of the system, therefore leading to challenges in estimating the reliability of these systems against severe windstorms. Indeed, the estimation of the reliability of a wind-excited high-rise structural system generally requires the time-history response analysis over large suites (possible thousands) of synthetic wind storms. The significant duration of typical wind storms, in the order of hours, as well as the complex phenomena that can cause inelastic failure, from low-cycle fatigue to ratcheting, makes this a computationally and theoretically challenging problem to solve. This research seeks to define a new paradigm for solving this problem through the development of probabilistic dynamic shakedown frameworks for the inelastic analysis of wind-excited structures. These methods have the potential to provide tools that enable the rapid evaluation, as compared to time-history integration, of the post-elastic reliability of a wide class of high-rise structures.”  — Prof. Seymour Spence

Phase I on this research has been completed to provide proof-of-concept of the dynamic shakedown framework. Phase II of this project will advance the framework algorithm and develop the necessary user tools and documentation to enable the full transition from proof-of-concept to practice.

In Phase II, a comprehensive User Interface (UI) and Guideline will be developed to 1) provide a means for practicing engineers to systematically apply dynamic shakedown analysis following Path Three of the ASCE Pre-Standard for Performance-Based Wind Design (PBWD), and 2) provide essential documentation that will aide the peer review of designs derived through the application of dynamic shakedown. This research project will also advance the dynamic shakedown algorithms to 1) include P-Delta effects, 2) further develop the estimation of the strains and deformations at shakedown and post-shakedown, and 3) allow small failure probabilities to be estimated with confidence without having to consider huge sample sets.