The design of tall buildings, while concerned with efficiently and effectively carrying the anticipated loads imposed upon the structure, must also consider serviceability and habitability issues. With the trend toward taller, lightweight structures, susceptibilities to the action of wind are enhanced, as a consequence of increased flexibility and potentially diminished damping. While a given design may satisfactorily carry all loads and even meet serviceability requirements, the structure may still suffer from levels of motion causing significant discomfort to its occupants and triggering responses that may include: concern, anxiety, fear, and vertigo or extreme responses of dizziness, headaches, and nausea. As a result, over recent decades, there has been a concerted effort to quantify acceleration levels that induce negative response in building occupants, though this discussion has not been free from debate. However, the rapid growth of high-rise construction worldwide has insured that the issue of motion perception will remain an urgent concern to designers, prompting the formation of this panel of experts to address the efficacy of habitability criteria and the appropriateness of the two most popular perception criteria: peak and RMS accelerations.
Though the session was intended to focus on the efficacy of perception criteria themselves, it became evident from both the panel and audience, that the concerns surrounding perception criteria are strongly interrelated with issues of structural damping and its uncertainty and an overall lack of full-scale validation in tall buildings. This website was developed to showcase the commentaries made during this lively and informative session and help to further these important discussions in an online forum.
If you have any questions/comments about this site, please contact the session rapporteur, Tracy Kijewski at tkijewsk@nd.edu.