Wind tunnels are machines in which objects are held stationary inside a tube, and air is blown around it to study the interaction between the object and the moving air. They are used to test the aerodynamic effects of aircraft, rockets, cars, and buildings. Different wind tunnels range in size from less than a foot across, to over 100 feet (30 m), and can have air that moves at speeds from a light breeze to hypersonic velocities.
Taipei 101, formerly known as the Taipei World Financial Center, is a 508.0 m, 101 story skyscraper in Taipei, Taiwan. It is owned by Taipei Financial Center Corporation. The building was officially classified as the world's tallest from its opening on 31 December 2004. However, the Burj Khalifa surpassed Taipei 101 in 2009. Upon completion, it became the world's first skyscraper to exceed a height of half a kilometer. As of 2023, Taipei 101 is the tallest building in Taiwan and the eleventh tallest building in the world.
A tuned mass damper (TMD), also known as a harmonic absorber or seismic damper, is a device mounted in structures to reduce mechanical vibrations, consisting of a mass mounted on one or more damped springs. Its oscillation frequency is tuned to be similar to the resonant frequency of the object it is mounted to, and reduces the object's maximum amplitude while weighing much less than it.
The JPMorgan Chase Tower, formerly Texas Commerce Tower, is a 305.4-meter (1,002-foot), 2,243,013-square-foot (208,382.7 m2), 75-story skyscraper at 600 Travis Street in Downtown Houston, Texas, United States. It is currently the tallest building in Texas and the South Central region of the United States, the tallest five-sided building in the world, the 29th-tallest building in the United States, and the 107th-tallest building in the world.
The John Hancock Tower, colloquially known as the Hancock, is a 60-story, 790-foot (240 m) skyscraper in the Back Bay neighborhood of downtown Boston. Designed by Henry N. Cobb of the firm I. M. Pei & Partners, it was completed in 1976, and has held the title as the tallest building in New England ever since. In 2015, the lease belonging to the John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company, for which the skyscraper was named, expired, and it was renamed to its address at 200 Clarendon Street.
A windcatcher, wind tower, or wind scoop is a traditional architectural element, originated in Iran (Persia), used to create cross ventilation and passive cooling in buildings. Windcatchers come in various designs, depending on whether local prevailing winds are unidirectional, bidirectional, or multidirectional, on how they change with altitude, on the daily temperature cycle, on humidity, and on how much dust needs to be removed. Despite the name, windcatchers can also function without wind.
A water tunnel is an experimental facility used for testing the hydrodynamic behavior of submerged bodies in flowing water. It functions similar to a recirculating wind tunnel, but uses water as the working fluid, and related phenomena are investigated, such as measuring the forces on scale models of submarines or lift and drag on hydrofoils. Water tunnels are sometimes used in place of wind tunnels to perform measurements because techniques like particle image velocimetry (PIV) are easier to implement in water. For many cases as long as the Reynolds number is equivalent, the results are valid, whether a submerged water vehicle model is tested in air or an aerial vehicle is tested in water. For low Reynolds number flows, tunnels can be made to run oil instead of water. The advantage is that the increased viscosity will allow the flow to be a higher speed for a lower Reynolds number.
The stack effect or chimney effect is the movement of air into and out of buildings through unsealed openings, chimneys, flue-gas stacks, or other purposefully designed openings or containers, resulting from air buoyancy. Buoyancy occurs due to a difference in indoor-to-outdoor air density resulting from temperature and moisture differences. The result is either a positive or negative buoyancy force. The greater the thermal difference and the height of the structure, the greater the buoyancy force, and thus the stack effect. The stack effect can be useful to drive natural ventilation in certain climates, but in other circumstances may be a cause of unwanted air infiltration or fire hazard.
Pearl River Tower (珠江城大厦) is a 71-story, 309.6 m (1,016 ft), clean technology neofuturistic skyscraper at the junction of Jinsui Road/Zhujiang Avenue West, Tianhe, Guangzhou, China. The tower's architecture and engineering were performed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill with Adrian D. Smith and Gordon Gill as architects. Ground broke on the tower on 8 September 2006 and construction was completed in March 2011. It is intended for office use and is partially occupied by the China National Tobacco Corporation.
Wind engineering is a subset of mechanical engineering, structural engineering, meteorology, and applied physics that analyzes the effects of wind in the natural and the built environment and studies the possible damage, inconvenience or benefits which may result from wind. In the field of engineering it includes strong winds, which may cause discomfort, as well as extreme winds, such as in a tornado, hurricane or heavy storm, which may cause widespread destruction. In the fields of wind energy and air pollution it also includes low and moderate winds as these are relevant to electricity production and dispersion of contaminants.
Thornton Tomasetti is a global, 1,500-plus person scientific and engineering consulting firm.
1322 Golden Empire Tower is a 57-storey residential skyscraper in Manila, Philippines. It is owned by Moldex Land, Inc., part of the Moldex Group of Companies. Standing at 203 meters, it is the tallest building in the City of Manila, and is the 12th-tallest building in the country and Metro Manila as well. The building has 55 floors above ground, and 2 basement levels for parking.
EllisDon is an employee-owned construction services company that was founded and incorporated in 1951 in London, Ontario, Canada, by brothers Don and David Ellis Smith. The company is headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada.
Airflow, or air flow, is the movement of air. Air behaves in a fluid manner, meaning particles naturally flow from areas of higher pressure to those where the pressure is lower. Atmospheric air pressure is directly related to altitude, temperature, and composition.
Ahsan Kareem is the Robert M. Moran Professor of Engineering in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences (CEEES) at the University of Notre Dame. He is Director of the Nathaz Modeling Laboratory and served as the past Chair at the Department of CEEES at the University of Notre Dame.
In July 1978, a possible structural flaw was discovered in Citicorp Center, a skyscraper that had recently been completed in New York City. Workers quietly made repairs over the next few months. The building, now known as Citigroup Center, occupied an entire block and was to be the headquarters of Citibank. Its structure, designed by William LeMessurier, had several unusual design features, including a raised base supported by four offset stilts and a column in the center, diagonal bracing which absorbed wind loads from upper stories, and a tuned mass damper with a 400-ton concrete weight floating on oil to counteract oscillation movements. It was the first building that used active mechanical elements for stabilization.
