• Revealing the impact of surrounding buildings on the wind-induced response of the AC structure. • Applying the AR linear filtering method to the numerical simulation of wind speed time history for the AC structure. • Providing wind-resistant design recommendations for AC structures with surrounding buildings. Air-cooling (AC) structures are widely used in power plants but are highly sensitive to wind loads due to their large size and complex geometry. This study examines the wind-induced response of AC structures considering the effects of surrounding buildings using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. Wind pressure distributions and shape coefficients were evaluated under different wind directions. The simulated shape coefficients agree well with experimental data, validating the CFD approach. Results show that surrounding buildings significantly increase shape coefficients under a 90° wind direction. Fluctuating wind speeds for the AC structure were simulated using the autoregressive (AR) linear filtering method, capturing spatial characteristics and showing excellent agreement between the simulated and target wind spectra. Dynamic time-history analyses based on these simulated fluctuating wind loads indicate that wind-induced vibration coefficients of windbreak walls exceed ASCE 7 limits under critical wind conditions, indicating that these exceedances warrant attention in design. In contrast, vibration coefficients at column tops remain within code limits even in the presence of surrounding buildings. These findings provide practical guidance for the wind-resistant design of AC structures in complex environments.
Zhao et al. (Fri,) studied this question.