A Comparative Study on Interference Factors of Buildings

Wind loads on buildings in real environments can be quite different from those measured on isolated buildings in wind tunnels. Surroundings can significantly increase or decrease the wind forces on the interfered buildings. The parameters affecting the wind forces may include the geometries and orientations of these buildings, the reduced wind velocity number of the adjacent buildings and the upstream terrain condition [Xie&Gu (2007)]. Due to complex arrangement of buildings in urban scenario, different interference factors (IF) have been proposed by researchers to account for interference effects among various building configurations such as mean interference factor (MIF), envelope interference factor (EIF), dynamic interference factor (DIF), regression interference factors (RIF) for different cases of mean and dynamic interference effects with varying heights of buildings. Also included are certain other parameters like interference index which also give a qualitative estimate of the interference effects.