ABSTRACT
Traditional least weight optimization of tall buildings is based on the definition of a few idealized equivalent static wind loads derived from directionless wind models. This procedure could lead to unsafe designs considering the inherently directional nature of extreme wind climates. This is especially true considering traditional models used for combining aerodynamics and site specific climatological information. Indeed these methods were developed for buildings with statistically and mechanically uncoupled systems exhibiting strong preferential behavior for certain wind directions. In this paper a recently developed component-wise reliability model is used to rigorously combine the directional building aerodynamics and climatological information. An efficient reliability-based design optimization scheme is then proposed based on decoupling the traditionally nested optimization loop from the reliability analysis. The decoupled optimization problem is solved by defining a series of approximate explicit sub-problems in terms of the second order response statistics of the constrained functions.
Keywords: Reliability-based design optimization, Vulnerability, Directional wind climates, Tall building design.
