Dynamical performances of a wind-excited high-rise structure equipped with a multiblock movable faca̧de

In 2005, Moon proposed to equip tall buildings with movable façades to improve structural performance. Previous studies showed that, although this could be very effective in mitigating wind-induced vibrations, its applicability is limited, as façades tend to exhibit excessive relative displacements. To solve this issue, two improvements are proposed in this work. First, the original idea of a monolithic façade is generalized to a Multiblock Movable Façade (MMF) where the external building skin is segmented into several independent blocks. Second, a friction slider equipped with bumpers is used to realize a dissipative connection capable of limiting the displacements of the façade. To evaluate the applicability of these ideas, the case study of a (Formula presented.) tall building (the Isozaki tower in Milan, Italy) is considered. Dissipative sliders are modeled as nonlinear hysteretic elements incorporated into a finite element model of the building. Numerical simulations of the dynamical effects of wind-actions are carried out to compare the performances of the building with and without MMF. The results show that the actions transmitted to the building by the façade can be tuned by properly setting the characteristics of the MMF system to achieve satisfactory performance in terms of maximum displacements and accelerations.