Numerical simulations of wind drags on straight and twisted polygonal buildings

This paper presents a systematic study of wind drags on high-rise buildings of various shapes using computational fluid dynamics. By increasing the side number of a polygon, the drag coefficient of the extruded tower decreases and eventually converges to that of a circular tower. The results also show consistent reduction of wind drag when round corners are applied to the polygonal cross section and when the radius of the round corner is gradually increased. This paper also investigates the effect of twisting the building on reducing the wind drag. Design of Experiments shows that the wind drag can be reduced if the building is twisted appropriately.