Wind Break Floors
Wind load is one of the most important factors to be considered when designing a tall structure. The high speed winds can cause serious problems in case of high rise structures. Although not pre-eminently seen in Nepal’s context, skyscrapers are a common civil engineering feature of most developed countries all around the world. The design and construction of these skyscrapers often is tedious and challenging and equally important is the wind load. There are many examples of civil engineering failures where the lack of consideration to the wind load has invited severe problems and in some cases, even the loss of life and property. And in such a case it has become quite essential to readily study and design for the wind loads in order to deal with them effectively.
Wind loads for skyscrapers can be particularly distressing in areas with high wind velocity and to combat this, engineers have come up with an innovative concept of blow through floors which helps to mitigate the wind load problems and help maintain the structural stability of the skyscraper even in regions with high wind velocity.
How it works is fairly simple to understand, as in case of 432 Park Avenue , one or multiple floor are just left completely empty, with no walls, windows or doors but only structural elements i.e beams and columns. These empty floors seem insignificant and may also be perceived as a bad miss by an architectural design point of view, but in reality they play a critical role in maintaining the structural soundness of the skyscraper. These blow through floors allow the wind to pass through them with minimal resistance unlike the resistance met by the wind in other ordinary skyscraper floors.
The variation in the wind load distribution along the structure can be demonstrated below .
This variation is so crucial not only because the wind load is greatly reduced but because it means that the skyscraper can be built on a small area up to a large height. It further means that the core and foundation of a skyscraper can be given some leeway as there is more even distribution of load along the structure itself and the concentration of load is somewhat mitigated.
This has already been put to practice at 432 Park Avenue in New York, as shown in the image above and in Vista Tower Chicago as shown in the image below.
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