Directionality reduction effect of design wind loads on hong kong buildings

The extreme wind climate of Hong Kong has been estimated by using the wind data at Waglan. The 50 year return period wind speeds at 36 compass directions, and that without direction have been determined. The incorporation of the results with the directional variation of the structural response of building to compute the extreme wind induced structural response has been outlined. It has been demonstrated that by taking account the directional effect, the wind induced structural response for a given return period is smaller than that computed from code-type approach in which the directionfree wind speed is assumed blowing at the critical direction.