ABSTRACT
Engineers have learned from building occupants and owners, and from wind-tunnel studies, that designing a tall building to meet a given drift limit under code-specifi ed equivalent static loads is not enough to make occupants comfortable during windstorms. However, they have only limited control over three intrinsic factors, namely, the height, the shape, and the mass that infl uence the dynamic response of buildings. Additionally, the behavior of a tall building subjected to dynamic loads such as wind or seismic activity is diffi cult to predict with any accuracy because of the uncertainty associated with the evaluation of a building’s damping and stiffness, as well as the complicated nature of loading.
