Evaluation of Wind Comfort Over the Balconies of an Irregular Tall Building by Using Computational Wind Engineering

In the last decade, the construction of tall buildings in Mexico has greatly increased, which has raised the need for open spaces, e.g., building balconies, to provide comfort to people. The comfort of people in balconies can be impaired due to adverse wind effects. Although current Mexican standards contemplate service condition assessments from the structural approach, there are still no guidelines to establish criteria due to wind direct perception. In this work, numerical simulations are performed by means of Computational Wind Engineering to predict wind velocities in the balconies of a tall building. These wind velocities were used to evaluate wind comfort with the Beaufort modified scale, which associates wind speeds with physical sensations in people. Based on this, the less comfortable building balconies were identified.