Serviceability assessment of tall buildings in the framework of Performance-Based Wind Engineering

A probabilistic procedure for the Performance-Based Design of slender structures subject to wind actions is illustrated and applied to an example case: the assessment of the occupant comfort requirement for a 74 storey steel building. The occupant comfort is related to the perception of building vibrations under wind actions. The central objective of the procedure is the assessment of the adequacy of the structure through the probabilistic description of a set of decision variables (DVs): a DV is a measurable attribute that represents a specific structural performance. In the example case, DV is the peak value of the across-wind acceleration at the top of the building, and the risk is conventionally expressed by the probability that DV exceeds proper threshold values, defined as a function of the fundamental period of vibration of the structure.