Engineering Structures 26 (2004) 1173–1183

www.elsevier.com/locate/engstruct

Mean interference effects among tall buildings

Z.N. Xie a,b, M. Gu a,

a
State Key Laboratory for Disaster Reduction in Civil Engineering, Tongji University, Siping Road 1239, Shanghai 200092,
People’s Republic of China
b
Department of Civil Engineering, Shantou University, Shantou 515063, People’s Republic of China

Received 28 June 2003; received in revised form 1 March 2004; accepted 8 March 2004

Abstract

The mean interference effects between two and among three tall buildings are studied by a series of wind tunnel tests. Both the
shielding and channeling effects are discussed to understand the complexity of the multiple-building effects. The results show that
the upstream interfering buildings cause certain shielding effect by decreasing the mean wind load on the downstream principal
building. For buildings of the same height, the shielding effect increases and, therefore, the interference factor (IF) decreases, with
the increase of the breadth of the interfering buildings. However, due to the channeling effects, two adjacent interfering buildings
can significantly enhance the mean wind load on the principal building. In addition, the variation of the shielding effect is found
to be significant when the heights of interfering buildings range from 50% to 125% of the height of the principal building. How-
ever, higher interfering buildings may cause stronger channeling effects.
# 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Tall buildings; Mean wind loads; Wind tunnel test; Interference effects; Channeling effects

1. Introduction loads on the principal building. However, due to the

Generally, the mean interference effects of tall build-
ings present ‘‘shielding effects’’ where the presence of
existing nearby buildings (hereafter referred to as inter-
fering buildings) tends to decrease the mean wind load
on the principal building. For a pair of buildings of
equal size in tandem arrangement, Sakamoto and
Haniu [1] found that the drag force of the downstream
building reduced to zero when the upstream building
was three times the building breadth away (center-to-
center spacing) from the downstream building and
the mean drag force could be negative when the
spacing was less than this critical distance. The shield-
ing effect decrease with the increase of the spacing
between the two buildings. However, Taniike [2] found
that the shielding effects could be still noticeable when
the upstream building was located at a place 16 times
of the building breadth away from the downstream
building. In his paper, he indicated a mean interference
factor of 0.8, or, a shielding of 20% of mean wind


Corresponding author. Tel./fax: +86-21-65981210.
E-mail address: minggu@mail.tongji.edu.cn (M. Gu).
0141-0296/$ - see front matter # 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.engstruct.2004.03.007
channeling effect, the interference factors can be greater
than 1.0 in some special arrangements of the buildings.
In other words, the adjacent buildings can also amplify
the mean wind loads acting on the principal building.
Some recent studies aimed at providing the general
recommendations on the wind-induced interference
effects. On the basis of the existing wind tunnel test
results, English and Fricke [3] employed a well-trained
neural network to predicate the interference effects
between pairs of buildings located in proximity in a
variety of geometric configurations and boundary-layer
wind flows. Khanduri et al. [4] also tried to give the
general guidelines of wind-induced interference effects
between two buildings. Kwok [5] made a review on this
topic. In his paper, he summarized along-wind and
across-wind and torsional interference factors between
two buildings, and analyzed mechanism of the inter-
ference. However, due to the huge amount of experi-
mental workload and the complexity of the interrelated
parameters, most previous investigations have mainly
focused on the interference effects between two build-
ings, that is, one interfering building and one principal
building. Only a few studies on the interference effects
1174 Z.N. Xie, M. Gu / Engineering Structures 26 (2004) 1173–1183

among three buildings have been reported which

showed that the interference effects among three build-
ings could be more significant than those between two
buildings [6].
This paper focuses mainly on the behaviors of the
mean interference effects among three buildings. The
mean interference effects in the present study are repre-
sented as the interference factor (IF) defined as:
Mean base moment of a building
with interfering buildings present
IF ¼ ð1Þ
Mean base moment of an isolated building
Furthermore, only the interference effects of the
mean along-wind base moment are considered in this
study since the mean across-wind base moment can be
neglected for an isolated building with square section.
In fact, there are two main kinds of effects involved in
the wind-induced interference effects on tall buildings,
namely, the mean interference effects and the dynamic
interference effects. Previous studies have shown that
the dynamic interference effects are more significant
and more severe than the mean effects. This paper
focuses on the mean interference effects. The studies of
the dynamic interference effects among three buildings Fig. 1. Distributions of wind profile and longitudinal turbulence
will be discussed in another paper. intensity.

ditioner and amplifier. The technical specifications of

2. Experiment setup and data processing
Wind tunnel tests were conducted in the STDX-1
Boundary Wind Tunnel of the Department of Civil
Engineering at Shantou University. The main test sec-
tion of STDX-1 for the building model is 20 m long,
3 m wide and 2 m high. The test section has an adjust-
able roof that provides a negligible pressure gradient in
the downstream direction. The maximum wind speed
of the wind tunnel can reach to 45 m/s. According to
the Chinese Load Code (GB50009-2001 [7]), the
exposure categories B and D (corresponding to expo-
nents of the power law of mean speed profile of 0.16
and 0.30, respectively) are simulated at a length scale
of 1/400 by setting spires, barriers, and rough elements
in the test area. The simulated mean wind profiles
(V =Vg ) and turbulence intensity distributions e (%) for
the two exposure categories are shown in Fig. 1, where
Vg is the mean wind speed at the gradient wind height.
The gradient heights for the exposure categories B and
D are 350 and 450 m, respectively; and accordingly
those of the simulated wind fields in the wind tunnel
are 0.875 and 1.125 m, respectively. In order to make a
comparison and investigate the mechanism of the inter-
ference effects, some configurations were tested in uni-
form flow in which the turbulence intensity e is less
than 1%.
The measurements in this study are carried out by
means of a Nitta’s universal force–moment sensor
model no. UFS-4515A100 and the attached signal con-
the sensor used are shown in Table 1.
The lowest natural frequency of the model-balance
systems can reach up to 112 Hz, which is much higher
than the concerned frequency range of the aerody-
namic forces acting on the building models. The con-
ditioned and amplified analog signal is transmitted to a
Scanivalve’s Zoc/EIM-16 module and eventually digi-
tized by Scanivalve’s sampling platform.
A 600 mm tall and 100 mm wide, square model
made from foamed plastics as a core and light wood
plate (1 mm thickness) as ‘‘clothes’’ is used as the prin-
cipal building. The model has the same length scale
with that of wind simulation, i.e., 1/400, representing a
real building of a height of 240 m. Two groups of
upstream building models are used as the interfering
buildings. The first group of interfering buildings has
the same height h as the principal building, where h
(=600 mm) is the height of the principal building
model, and square cross-sections with different
breadths of 0.5b, 0.75b, 1b, 1.5b, and 2.0b, where b
Table 1
Specifications of Nitta’s UFS-4515A100 sensor
Component Full scale range Accuracy
Fx, Fy 440 N
Linearity: 0.2% F.S.
Fz 880 N
Hysteresis: 0.2% F.S.
Mx, My, Mz 51 Nm
 Z.N. Xie, M. Gu / Engineering Structures 26 (2004) 1173–1183
Fig. 2. View of the principal building and the interfering buildings.
Fig. 3. x–y coordinate grid for locating the interfering buildings,
principal building is fixed at (0, 0).
(=100 mm) is the breadth of the principal building
model. The second group of interfering buildings has
the same cross-section as the principal building but dif-
ferent heights of 0.5h, 0.75h, 1h, 1.25h and 1.5h. All
building models are orientated with one face normal to
the wind direction and the spacing between them varies
as the test parameters in the along-wind direction (x)
and the across-wind direction (y) in a grid system
shown in Figs. 2 and 3, respectively. More than 7400
cases of building arrangements were tested in the
present study.
In order to quickly process the huge amount of test
data, a system of Windows-based software platform
that integrates the radial basis function-based artificial
neural network (ANN), statistical analysis and data-
base management is developed. All the interference fac-
tors from the tests can easily be stored in the database
with the software. The software system can also be
1175
used to analyze the interference characteristics and
model the interference effects by the ANN-based
method. With the help of this software, the interference
factors at various positions can be calculated and
visualized quickly and accurately by modeling the test
data.
3. Experimental results and discussions
3.1. Results for two identical square buildings
and comparison with previous studies
English [8] synthesized several existing wind tunnel
test results that were obtained for different simulated
terrains and concluded a regression equation to predict
the mean along-wind interference factor of the down-
stream building for twin buildings arranged in tandem.
The formula is given in the polynomial form as:
IF ¼ 0:05 þ 0:65x þ 0:29x2  0:24x3 ð2Þ
where x ¼ log½Sðh þ bÞ=hb, S is the clear spacing
between the two buildings, b is the breadth of the
buildings, and h is the height of the buildings.
To check the reliability of the results of the present
tests, the interference factors of two tandem-arranged
buildings under the uniform flow condition, exposure
categories B and D, are compared with Eq. (2), as
shown in Fig. 4. The comparison shows a good agree-
ment between the results measured in exposure cate-
gory D and the regression results from Eq. (2).
However, differences are found in exposure category B,
and especially in uniform flow. It can be seen that the
deviation of the interference factors decrease with the
increase of building spacing in the different categories
of terrains. The maximum difference is found in the
spacing of 3b to 6b. The smoother the upstream ter-
Fig. 4. Interference factors for two tandem-arranged buildings, x
denotes the center-to-center spacing between the interfering building
and the principal building.
1176 Z.N. Xie, M. Gu / Engineering Structures 26 (2004) 1173–1183
Table 2
Comparison of the IFs of twin-building configuration
Interfering building at (x, y) (5b, 1.5b) (5b, 2.5b)
Khanduri et al. [9] 0.78 0.90
Huang [11] 0.74 0.98
Present study 0.73 0.96
a
Denotes extrapolation, see Fig. 3.
rain, the more significant the shielding effects of the
upstream building. In addition, interference factors of
zero are seen in the figure at about 2b, 3b and 4b for
the three types of terrains, respectively. The position of
the zero value in exposure category B with a ¼ 0:16 is
at a center-to-center spacing of 3b, that is almost the
same as that of the result observed by Sakamoto and
Haniu [1] under the similar terrain condition of open
terrain.
For the results of other building arrangements,
Khanduri et al. [9] gave the IFs caused by an upstream
building at the region of [2b–8b, 0–4b] in open terrain
by means of synthesizing the results given by Taniike
and Inaoka [10] and Saunders and Melbourne [6].
Huang [11] also conducted some similar experiments in
the same terrain of exposure category B. Table 2 lists
the above-mentioned results, together with the corre-
sponding results that are predicted by the well-trained
neural network with the test data from the present
study. The results show the good consistency and the
efficiency of the ANN-based method presented in this
paper. Of course, differences still can be found in the
table due to the use of different terrain categories and
building aspect ratios in different studies.
Fig. 5 presents the IF contours for the two equal size
buildings in uniform flow and exposure categories B
and D. Clearly, the shielding effects vary with the
degree of roughness of the upstream terrain. One can
see that each contour has a negative region corre-
sponding to the negative IF, which means that the
principal building is subjected to a reverse wind drag
force. The negative IF region increases with the
smoothness of the upstream terrain.
3.2. Results for configurations of three equal size
buildings
3.2.1. Tandem arrangement
Compared with the mean interference effects of two
tandem-arranged buildings, the mean interference
effects of the three tandem-arranged buildings (an
arrangement of three buildings placed on behind the
other in the along-wind direction, i.e. yA ¼ 0 and yB ¼
0 for the two interfering buildings, see Fig. 3) are more
significant than those of other kinds of arrangements.
Fig. 6 gives the distribution of the interference factors
for three tandem-arranged buildings in exposure cate-
(5b, 4b) (8b, 0) (8b, 1.5b) (5b, 2.5b) (8b, 4b)
1.0 0.57 0.74 0.86 0.99
1.03 0.63 0.71 0.93 1.00
1.03a 0.57 0.64 0.88 1.02a
gory B. It can be seen that the minimum interference
factor is close to zero at smaller building spacing,
which is slightly different from that of two-building
configurations where IF equals to 0.2. In general, the
shielding effects are dominated by the nearer upstream
interfering building, especially at smaller spacing. Simi-
lar trends can be found for this configuration in
exposure category D.
3.2.2. Side-by-side arrangement
Table 3 gives the interference factors of the three
buildings in side-by-side configuration, where yA and
yB denote respectively the across-wind center-to-center
spacing, i.e. the across-wind coordinates defined in
Fig. 3, of the two interfering buildings and the princi-
pal building. It can be seen from the table that when
the two interfering buildings are located at the same
side of the principal building, they still can produce
shielding effects on the principal building, resulting in
an IF of 0.94. However, adverse effects of IF > 1 can
be found for most of the arrangements and the
maximum IF is found to be 1.10 when the two inter-
fering buildings are located at yA ¼ 3:2b and
yB ¼ 3:2b, respectively. This indicates that the two
symmetrically located interfering buildings can increase
10% or even more wind load on the middle principal
building, that is to say, the channeling effect in this
case is more significant than that of the two buildings
in side-by-side arrangement.
3.2.3. Staggered arrangement
For the interference effects of three buildings, four
variables (i.e. two x-coordinates and two y-coordinates
of the two interfering buildings) are included in each of
the configurations and the results are very difficult to
be expressed with simple contours. In this study, a sub-
stitute scheme is used to analyze the multi-variable test
results by fixing one interfering building (model A) at a
certain position and varying the spacing between the
other interfering building (model B) and the principal
building. An example is shown in Fig. 7 where the
building model A is fixed at (6.1b, 2.4b).
In order to compare the interference factors of the
three-building configuration with those of the two-
building configuration, model A is considered as an
additional interfering building to the two-building con-
figuration where the interference effects have been
 Z.N. Xie, M. Gu / Engineering Structures 26 (2004) 1173–1183 1177

Fig. 5. IF contours for the configuration of two equal size buildings in different upstream terrains. (a) Uniform flow; (b) exposure category B; (c)
exposure category D.

shown in Fig. 5b. It can be found from the comparison
results in Figs. 7 and 5b that the introduction of model
A increases the most significant shielding region of
IF 0:4 in the two-building configuration, with the
maximum longitudinal spacing changing from 5b to
about 6b. The slight shielding region of 0:8 < IF 1 is
also broadened with the introduction of model A.
These results indicate that the shielding effects are
enhanced in the three-building configuration.
However, the above-mentioned distribution in Fig. 7
is just a local description of the interference effects of
three-building configurations and cannot give the com-
plete information of the interference effects for the con-
figuration. Statistics analysis for a thorough description
of the interference effects is therefore needed and the
results are shown in Fig. 8, where p represents the per-
centage of the positions of the corresponding inter-
ference factor over the whole test positions of the
configurations. From this figure, one can see that p is
35% when IF is about equal to 1.0 for the two-building
configuration, but only about 13% for the three-build-
ing configuration. In general, for different levels of
IF 0:9, the value of p of three-building configuration
is greater than that of two-building configuration.
These results once again indicate that the shielding
effects of three-building configuration are more signifi-
cant than two-building configuration. However, due to
the channeling effect, the IF is found to be about 1.1
for 2% of the complete set of interfering building
arrangements, as shown in Fig. 8. That means that
there may be static amplification due to the existence
of two nearby interfering buildings.
1178 Z.N. Xie, M. Gu / Engineering Structures 26 (2004) 1173–1183

Fig. 6. Interference factors of the three equal size and tandem-arranged buildings in exposure category B.

3.2.4. Channeling effect
The channeling effect was mentioned in ASCE 7-98
[12] and other literature [13], but it has not been dis-
cussed in any detail in the previous studies. The reason
may partly be that this kind of effect is insignificant,
compared with the above-mentioned shielding effects.
However, the maximum IF is 1.04 in the present test in
the two-building configuration when the interfering
building is located side-by-side at (0, 3.2b). For the
configuration of three equal size buildings, the
maximum IF can increase up to 1.10 when the two
interfering buildings are located at (0, 3.2b).
Fig. 9 presents the IF distributions from the present
test for the two interfering buildings at y ¼ 3:2b in
exposure categories B and D. The most significant
interfering positions in the two categories of terrain are
found to be the same. From Fig. 9, one can see that
two side-by-side upstream interfering buildings produce
almost no static amplification effect on the principal
building. Only when one of the two interfering build-
ings is located side-by-side with the principal building
and the other one is arranged upstream, the inter-
ference factor can be 1.04, the same as that of the
two-building configuration; and the region where
IF 1:04 in exposure category B is much larger than
that in category D. It can be concluded that the chan-
neling effect could be more significant in the smoother
terrain.
3.3. Effects of breadth ratio
To investigate the effects of the breadth ratio (here-
after referred to as Br) of across-section of the inter-
fering buildings to the principal building on the
interference effects, five types of interfering building
models with different breadths are tested. These inter-
fering models have the same height as the principal
building model but with different breadths. The
breadth ratios adopted in the test are 0.5, 0.75, 1.0, 1.5
and 2.0. The results are discussed in the following.

Table 3 3.3.1. Two-building configuration

Mean interference effects for side-by-side arrangement in exposure Generally, larger Br of interfering building produces
category B stronger shielding effects. In most of the interfering
yA yB IF positions, the interference factor decreases with the
increase of Br. However, due to the channeling effect
3.2b 1.6b 0.94
3.2b 1.6b 1.04 discussed in the previous sections, the interfering build-
3.2b 2.4b 1.09 ing with side-by-side arrangement can produce adverse
3.2b 3.2b 1.10 static amplification effects on the principal building.
2.4b 1.6b 1.04 These adverse effects can also increase with the increase
2.4b 2.4b 1.06
of Br. Fig. 10 presents the variation of this adverse
1.6b 1.6b 1.04
interference effects with respect to different breadths of
 Z.N. Xie, M. Gu / Engineering Structures 26 (2004) 1173–1183
Fig. 7. Variations of the interference factor vs. the relative positions of interfering building model B for interfering building model A fixed at
(6.1b, 2.4b) in exposure category B.
the interfering buildings located at (0, 3.2b), i.e. in
side-by-side arrangement with the principal building. It
might be anticipated that a parabolic relationship exists
between IF and Br. A maximum value of IF ¼ 1:16 is
recorded when Br ¼ 2, as shown in Fig. 10. This indi-
cates that the interfering building with Br ¼ 2 can
increase 16% mean wind load on the principal building
when the center-to-center spacing of the two buildings
is 3.2b.
3.3.2. Three-building configuration
More interfering buildings generally produce more
significant shielding effects, and the shielding effects
increase with the increase of Br. The statistical proper-
ties for the interferences effects of five types of inter-
fering buildings are shown in Fig. 11. From this figure,
one can see that the most notable shielding region
of IF 0:4 increases quickly with the increase of Br
Fig. 8. Comparison of the distribution of the interference effects
between the configurations of two and three equal size buildings in
exposure category B.
1179
while the regions of 0:5 IF 0:9 remain unchanged
relatively.
The increase of the building size could also enhance
the adverse static amplification on the principal build-
ing when the two interfering buildings are located at
some critical locations. For the five types of breadths
of interfering buildings, the critical position for both of
the two interfering buildings are found to be about
(0, 3.2b) in the present test grid region shown in
Fig. 3. The corresponding maximum interference fac-
tors for different Br in exposure category B are listed in
Table 4. The table shows that the maximum IF increa-
ses with Br, and a maximum value of 1.195 is found for
the interfering buildings of Br ¼ 2. This indicate that
the two symmetrically located larger sized interfering
buildings of Br ¼ 2 can increase 20% wind load on the
middle principal building.
3.4. Effects of height ratio
To investigate the effects of the height ratio (here-
after referred to as Hr) of the interfering buildings to
the principal building on the interference effects, five
types of interfering building models with different
heights were tested. These interfering building models
have the same breadth of that of the principal building
model but different heights. The height ratios for the
test are 0.5, 0.75, 1.0, 1.25, and 1.5.
3.4.1. Two-building configuration
Fig. 12 shows the effects of Hr on the interference
effects for the two-building configuration. The results
show that the interfering building with Hr ¼ 0:5 pro-
duced insignificant shielding effects; on the other hand,
heights greater than 1.25 produce similar interference
effects. This means that the shielding effects of the
1180 Z.N. Xie, M. Gu / Engineering Structures 26 (2004) 1173–1183

Fig. 10. Interference factors vs. breadth ratios of interfering build-

ings located at (0, 3.2b) in exposure category B.

Fig. 11. Comparison of the distribution of the interference effects of

different breadth ratio configurations (three-building configurations,
exposure category B).

tions of interference effects for the cases of the two

interfering buildings with different height ratios in
exposure category B. The results show that two lower
Fig. 9. IFs distributions of three-building configuration for two
interfering buildings of Hr ¼ 0:5 produce insignificant
interfering buildings A and B fixed at yA ¼ 3:2b and yB ¼ 3:2b. (a)
Exposure category B; (b) exposure category D. interference effects, with most of the interference fac-
tors being within the range [0.9, 1.0] in exposure cate-
gory B. Also, the interference effect of these two lower
interfering building with Hr 0:5 could be neglected,
while the interference effects are almost the same when
Hr 1:25. So the mean interference effects may only be Table 4
sensitive to the height ratio in the range Maximum IF for different interfering building size due to channeling
0:5 Hr 1:25. However, for Hr 1:25, the channel- effects (three-building configurations, exposure category B)
ing effects become significant than those of the case Br Maximum IF
with Hr ¼ 1.
0.5 1.03
0.75 1.05
3.4.2. Three-building configuration 1.0 1.10
More interfering buildings generally enhance the 1.5 1.15
2.0 1.195
shielding effects. Fig. 13 presents the statistical distribu-
 Z.N. Xie, M. Gu / Engineering Structures 26 (2004) 1173–1183
Fig. 12. Comparison of the distribution of the interference effects of
different height ratio configurations (two-building configuration,
exposure category B).
interfering buildings becomes even less significant in
the higher turbulence of exposure category D. The
results indicate that the effects of interfering building
with a height less than 0.5h can be neglected. Only
when the heights of the interfering buildings are greater
or equal to 0.75h does shielding effects become notable.
In contrast to the significant change in interference
factors for interfering buildings with Hr ¼ 0:5; 0:75
and 1:0, factors for interfering buildings with Hr ¼
1:0; 1:25 and 1:5 vary only marginally. However, as
indicated in Fig. 13, a slight difference for IF ¼ 0:7
between the configuration of Hr ¼ 1 and that of Hr >
1 in exposure category B is found. It shows that the
shielding effects of the two interfering buildings with
Hr ¼ 1 are greater than those of the two interfering
buildings with Hr > 1. Fig. 14 presents the variations
of the IF with respect to the height ratios of the inter-
fering buildings when the two interfering buildings are
located at (6.1b, 1.6b) and (6.1b, 1.6b), respectively.
From this figure, one can see that the interference
factors decrease rapidly with the increase of Hr in the
range from 0.5 to 1.0, but for interfering buildings of
Hr 1, the interference factors increase marginally
Fig. 13. Comparison of the distribution of the interference effects of
different height ratio configurations (three-building configurations,
exposure category B).
1181
Fig. 14. Interference effects of different height ratios while two
upstream interfering buildings are located at (6.1b, 1.6b).
with the increase of Hr. It can be also found from
Fig. 14 that the shielding effects in smoother terrain of
exposure category B are more significant than those in
category D.
Based on the above results, it can be summarized
that the sensitive height of interfering buildings for the
mean interference effects are in the range from 0.5h to
1.25h, while the interference effects remain almost the
same for higher interfering buildings. However, higher
interfering buildings cause stronger channeling effect,
and the static amplification may increase with the
increase of the height of the interfering buildings.
A maximum value of 1.13 of IF is recorded when the
two interfering buildings with Hr ¼ 1:5 are located at
(0, 1.6b) in terrain category D.
3.5. Simplification of the results for three-building
in arbitrary configurations
Since four variables, i.e. two x-coordinates and two
y-coordinates of the two interfering buildings, are
involved in the analysis of the interference effects of
three-building configurations, the interference factors
cannot be simply expressed in a single contour as in the
two-building cases. The problem is how to deduce a
relatively simple and yet precise enough representation
method for practical applications from the complex
data from the wind tunnel tests. A reduced interference
factor (RIF) contour for three-building configuration is
thus proposed by synthesizing the effects over the
whole test domain.
Let PA(x,y) and PB(x,y) be the location coordinates
of two interfering buildings; the interference factor can
then be expressed as
IF ¼ f ðPA ;PB Þ; PA ;PB 2 X ð3Þ
1182 Z.N. Xie, M. Gu / Engineering Structures 26 (2004) 1173–1183
where X denotes the whole position domain of the
interfering buildings in the test. Simplifying the above
four-variable problem to a lower two-variable one, the
so-called RIF can be expressed as
RIF ¼ gðPA Þ ¼ max f ðPA ;PB Þ
PB 2X
From Eq. (4), the reduced interference factor, RIF,
can easily be expressed by a simple contour in the simi-
lar way of the two-building configuration. From
Eq. (4), it can also be seen that a RIF value is always
greater than or equal to the corresponding IF. In order
to make the estimated interference factor in terms of
Eq. (4) close to the real one, i.e., IF, the interference
factor for practical purpose may be determined by the
following equation
IF ¼ minðgðPA Þ;gðPB ÞÞ
Of course, the calculated result from Eq. (5) will also
be greater than or equal to that of Eq. (3), i.e. IF IF.
However, from the practical point of view, interference
factors defined by Eq. (5) are conservative.
Based on the above definitions, Fig. 15 shows the
distributions of the RIF for the configuration of three
identical buildings in exposure categories B and D,
respectively. Distributions of only half of the region are
drawn in the figure due to the symmetry of the RIF.
Fig. 15. The RIFs of three equal size building configuration. (a) Exposure category B; (b) exposure category D.
Fig. 15 also shows the shielding effects in exposure
category B are stronger than those in category D.
Meanwhile, stronger channeling effects can also be seen
in exposure category B, that is to say, the maximum
static amplification in exposure category B is more ser-
ð4Þ ious than that in category D.
An example is shown here to explain briefly how to
apply Eqs. (4) and (5) in practical use. For two inter-
fering buildings A and B located at PA ð4b;  bÞ and PB
ð9b;  2bÞ in exposure category B, one can obtain two
RIFs of gðPA Þ ¼ 0:81 and gðPB Þ ¼ 0:87 by interpolat-
ing from the distribution of the RIFs shown in Fig. 15a.
Then according to Eq. (5), the interference factor for
this configuration is IF ¼ minð0:81;0:87Þ ¼ 0:81.
4. Concluding remarks
ð5Þ The mean interference effects between two and
among three buildings with different configurations
have been studied by a series of detailed wind tunnel
tests. A good agreement between the current study and
the existing results in two-building configurations is
found, which ensures the reliability of the results and
conclusions proposed in the present study. For inter-
ference effects of three-building configurations, the
interference factor is simplified to an easier expressed
RIF to simplify the experiment results. The main
results are summarized as follows.
 Z.N. Xie, M. Gu / Engineering Structures 26 (2004) 1173–1183
1. Generally, the effects of the upstream building(s)
show shielding effects and the corresponding mean
interference factors are less than 1.0. But the static
amplifications, due to the channeling effects, could
also lead to an increase of 10% of the mean wind
load on the principal building when the two equal
size interfering buildings are located at (0, 3.2b),
or, in other words, the three buildings are arranged
side-by-side. The observed maximum increase of the
mean wind load can be 20% depending on the sec-
tion size and spacing of the buildings.
2. The interference effects are sensitive to the breadth
of the interfering buildings. Larger upstream build-
ings could produce more shielding effects on the
principal building and, meanwhile, side-by-side
interfering buildings with larger size can produce
more serious channeling effect on the principal
building.
3. The height of the interfering buildings could also
affect the wind load on the principal building. The
results show that interference from lower interfering
buildings with Hr 0:5 is negligible while the sensi-
tive height ratio of interfering buildings is in the
range from 0.5 to 1.25. For higher buildings, the
shielding effect is constant. However, higher inter-
fering building may cause stronger channeling effects
and the static amplifications will increase with the
increase of the heights of the interfering buildings.
Due to the complex of the problem, the above dis-
cussions and conclusions on the effects of the geometry
of interfering buildings are still in the qualitative level.
More tests and efforts are therefore needed to improve
the understanding in this area.
Acknowledgements
This research is jointly supported by the National
Science Foundation (50321003), the Foundation for
University Key Teachers by the Ministry of Education,
1183
and the Science Foundation of Guangdong Province
(010455). They are gratefully acknowledged.
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