This paper aims to systematically study the across-wind loads of rectangular-shaped tall buildings with aerodynamic modifications and propose refined mathematic models accordingly. This study takes the CAARC (Commonwealth Advisory Aeronautical Research Council) standard tall building as a benchmark model and conducts a series of pressure measurements on the benchmark model and four CAARC models with different round corner rates (5%, 10%, 15% and 20%) in a boundary layer wind tunnel to investigate the across-wind dynamic loads of the typical tall building with different corner modifications. Based on the experimental results of the five models, base moment coefficients, power spectral densities and vertical correlation coefficients of the across-wind loads are compared and discussed. The analyzed results shown that the across-wind aerodynamic performance of the tall buildings can be effectively improved as the rounded corner rate increases. Taking the corner round rate and terrain category as two basic variables, empirical formulas for estimating the across-wind dynamic loads of CAARC standard tall buildings with various rounded corners are proposed on the basis of the wind tunnel testing results. The accuracy and applicability of the proposed formulas are verified by comparisons between the empirical formulas and the experimental results.
