J. W. Tang1*, Y. M. Xie1 and P. Felicetti2

1School of Civil, Environmental and Chemical Engineering, RMIT University

2Felicetti Pty Ltd Consulting Engineers, Melbourne, VIC 3000,

This paper presents a systematic study of wind drags on high-rise buildings of various shapes using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). By increasing the side number of a polygon, the drag coefficient of the extruded tower decreases and eventually converges to that of a circular tower. The results also show consistent reduction of wind drag when round corners are applied to the polygonal cross section and when the radius of the round corner is gradually increased. This paper also investigates the effect of twisting the building on reducing the wind drag. Design of Experiments (DOE) shows that the wind drag can be reduced if the building is twisted appropriately.