An improved derivation and comprehensive understanding of the equivalent static wind loads of high-rise buildings with structural eccentricities

The trend of constructing high-rise buildings with irregular structural configurations results in buildings with complicated external wind loads and eccentricities between the mass and stiffness centers, which complicate the assessment of buildings' 3D equivalent static wind load (ESWL). This paper develops an improved method to determine the 3D ESWLs for high-rise buildings with structural eccentricities. First, the derivation process of each floor's 3D internal force-based ESWLs, including the mean, background, and resonant components, is described in detail. Then, three typical high-rise buildings, each with 15 eccentricity cases, are used to demonstrate the proposed method's advantage in the wind resistance design of high-rise buildings with structural eccentricities, especially in providing reliable along-height distribution of ESWLs. Finally, systematic analyses are conducted to examine the effects of load-correlation, structural eccentricity ratio, and building side ratio on the derived 3D ESWLs. The results show that the proposed method provides a reliable along-height distribution, which helps give an adequate understanding of the ESWLs of high-rise buildings with structural eccentricities. Some concluding remarks are extracted from the results to show how the load-correlation, structural eccentricity ratio, and building side ratio affect the ESWLs of high-rise buildings. The conclusions are valuable references for the wind-resistant design of high-rise buildings with structural eccentricities.