Performance Assessment of an Existing 47-Story High-Rise Building under Extreme Wind Loads

This paper presents a wind performance-based evaluation of an existing 47-story steel moment frame high-rise building designed and built in the early 1970s according to the Houston Building Code in effect at the time with limited wind design criteria (strength requirement under factored wind loads, but no serviceability requirements considered) and no seismic design criteria. The building survived Hurricane Alicia (a Category-3 storm, 1983) without significant structural damage. The nonlinear dynamic response of the building to different wind hazard levels was evaluated by developing a 3D nonlinear finite-element model and using an incremental dynamic analysis (IDA) approach. Using results obtained from the IDA study and using wind performance criteria currently in practice, a wind performance assessment was carried out by evaluating the estimated performance levels as a function of basic wind speed. The results of this study indicated a surprisingly robust lateral capacity associated with the structural nonlinearity that occurred, but confirmed the existence of unacceptable serviceability performance under various levels of wind loading.