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Attenuation of the unsteady loading on a high-rise building using feedback control

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 June 2022

Xiao Hu*
Affiliation:
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, UK
Aimee S. Morgans
Affiliation:
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, UK
*
Email address for correspondence: x.hu19@imperial.ac.uk

Abstract

The unsteady wind loading on high-rise buildings has the potential to influence strongly their structural performance in terms of serviceability, habitability and occupant comfort. This paper investigates numerically the flow structures around a canonical high-rise building immersed in an atmospheric boundary layer, using wall-resolved large eddy simulations. The switching between two vortex shedding modes is explored, and the influence of the atmospheric boundary layer on suppressing symmetric vortex shedding is identified. It is shown that the antisymmetric vortex shedding mode is prevalent in the near wake behind the building, with strong coherence between the periodic fluctuations of the building side force and the antisymmetric vortex shedding mode demonstrated. Two feedback control strategies, exploiting this idea, are designed to alleviate the aerodynamic side-force fluctuations, using pressure sensing on just a single building wall. The sensor response to synthetic jet actuation along the two ‘leading edges’ of the building is characterised using system identification. Both the designed linear controller and the least mean square adaptive controller attenuate successfully the side-force fluctuations when implemented in simulations. The linear controller exhibits a better performance, and its effect on the flow field is to delay the formation of dominant vortices and increase the extent of the recirculation region. Feedback control that requires a smaller sensing area is then explored, with a comparable control effect achieved in the attenuation of the unsteady loading. This study could motivate future attempts to understand and control the unsteady loading of a high-rise building exposed to oncoming wind variations.

Information

Type
JFM Papers
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press
Figure 0

Figure 1. Flow set-up, showing the CAARC building model, the ground, the atmospheric boundary layer and the computational domain.

Figure 1

Figure 2. Profiles of (a) normalized mean velocity, and (b) turbulence intensity, generated by the SEM.

Figure 2

Figure 3. Baseline grids used in the simulation: (a) $x$$y$ slice, top view; (b) $x$$z$ slice, side view.

Figure 3

Table 1. Summary of the grid refinement study. The mean (overbar) and root-mean-square (r.m.s., subscript $\sigma$) values of the aerodynamic force coefficients $C_{d}$ and $C_{l}$ are compared to experimental values from Obasaju (1992).

Figure 4

Figure 4. $y^{+}$ colourmap on the surface of the building for the baseline mesh.

Figure 5

Figure 5. (a) Comparison of mean pressure coefficient distribution at $z=2/3H$. (b) Comparison of r.m.s. pressure coefficient distribution at $z=2/3H$. The pressure coefficient is ${C_p} = ( {p - {p_\infty }} )/( {0.5\rho U_H^{2}} )$.

Figure 6

Figure 6. Time-averaged streamwise velocity field and projected streamlines: (a) top view in the horizontal plane $z=0.5H$; (b) side view in the symmetry plane $y=0$; (c) downstream plane at $x=5B$.

Figure 7

Figure 7. Instantaneous snapshots of the pressure field at $z=0.5H$: (a) antisymmetric vortex shedding;(b) symmetric vortex shedding.

Figure 8

Figure 8. Instantaneous snapshots of iso-contours of pressure taken at $C_p=-0.2$, coloured by velocity. Flow is in the $+x$-direction.

Figure 9

Figure 9. Variation of instantaneous pressure coefficient on side faces at (a) $z=0.9H$, (b) $z=0.5H$, (c) $z=0.2H$, where $C_{pl}$ and $C_{pr}$ are the pressure coefficient averaged over a line on the left and right side faces at every height. Black circles indicate the symmetric vortex shedding.

Figure 10

Figure 10. Instantaneous streamlines and streamwise velocity field in horizontal slices at $z=0.5H$:(a) initiation of symmetric vortex shedding at $t=1.5$ s; (b) transition from symmetric back to antisymmetric vortex shedding at $t=1.6$ s. Red circles indicate the counter-rotating vortices.

Figure 11

Figure 11. First two POD modes of the pressure fluctuation: (a) 3-D POD modes and their corresponding spatial structures are plotted using the iso-contour of dominant amplitude; (b) POD modes plotted on the horizontal slice at $z=0.5H$.

Figure 12

Figure 12. Normalized spectra of the first two 3-D POD modes.

Figure 13

Figure 13. Power spectral density of $C_l$ at different heights of the CAARC building, where $C_l$ stands for the coefficient of the $y$-direction integrated pressure force at every height, and $St_B=fB/U$ is the Strouhal number based on the building width $B$. Filtering is applied using the pwelch function for clarity.

Figure 14

Figure 14. (a) Normalised spectra of the building's side-force fluctuation $C_l$. (b) PSD of $C_d$ of the building with two inflow conditions. Filtering is applied using the pwelch function for clarity.

Figure 15

Figure 15. Scatter plots for the fluctuation of the pressure coefficient on the building side faces, with(a) atmospheric boundary layer inflow, and (b) uniform inflow at different heights.

Figure 16

Figure 16. (a) Schematic of the antisymmetric base pressure force signal. (b) Normalised FFT spectra of the building's side-force fluctuation $C_l$ and the antisymmetric base pressure force signal, all in the absence of any actuation.

Figure 17

Figure 17. (a) Set-up of the body-mounted sensing and actuation. (b) Frequency domain model underpinning the linear feedback control strategy, with $s$ denoting the Laplace transform variable.

Figure 18

Figure 18. Schematic for the LMS feedback control strategy.

Figure 19

Figure 19. Frequency response – gain and phase shift for: (a) system identification data resulting from open-loop harmonic forcing as well as a fifth-order fit from the Matlab fitfrd command; (b) the designed controller $K(s)$ and sensitivity function $S(s)$.

Figure 20

Figure 20. Effect of control: (a) spectra for antisymmetric base pressure force signal with linear feedback control; (b) time variation of building side-force (lift) coefficient with linear feedback control;(c) corresponding actuation signal with linear feedback control; (d) spectra for antisymmetric base pressure force signal with LMS feedback control; (e) time variation of building side-force (lift) coefficient with LMS feedback control; ( f) corresponding actuation signal with LMS feedback control.

Figure 21

Figure 21. Streamwise velocity components of the first POD mode at $z=0.5H$ for: (a) unforced flow;(b) flow with the linear controller; (c) flow with the LMS controller.

Figure 22

Figure 22. Colour contours of the time-averaged streamwise velocity and line contours of the stream function: (a) unforced flow; (b) linear controlled flow.

Figure 23

Figure 23. (a) Set-up of the body-mounted sensors and actuation for the new feedback strategy. (b) Spectrum of the partial antisymmetric pressure signal for unforced flow.

Figure 24

Figure 24. Frequency response – gains and phase shifts for: (a) system identification data for open-loop forcing with fewer sensors; (b) designed controller $K_n(s)$ and sensitivity function $S_n(s)$.

Figure 25

Figure 25. Effect of the controller with fewer sensors – comparison between cases with and without feedback control in: (a) spectrum for antisymmetric base pressure signal; (b) time history for lift coefficient.