High-Rise Database-Assisted Design 1.1 (HR_Dad_1.1): Concepts, Software, and Examples

This report documents the changes that have been made to the previous structure of the HR_DAD software, thereby developing the program HR_DAD_1.1 capable of calculating efficiently the response of large scale real world tall buildings made up of many thousands of members. In particular the following upgrades on the previous software have been implemented: (1) Capability of performing time-domain calculations, requiring times of the order of hours, of the peak demand in each member of a real size structure (estimated time for the previous version of HR_ DAD on an AMD Athlon 64 processor 3000+ with 512MB was on the order of weeks); (2 Include as output of the software the peak demand of global response parameters such as inter-story drift and top floor acceleration for any number of column lines and locations on the top floor (3) Allow time histories of floor displacements and top floor accelerations to be saved for selected wind directions and speeds; (4) Implement a general input format for the wind tunnel information obtained by Synchronous Multi-Pressure Sensing System measurements, therefore allowing for easy consideration of tall buildings with irregular geometries; (5) Predispose the software for the eventual inclusion of a multi-hazard approach to wind design of tall buildings, that is, consider various types of wind, including hurricanes, synoptic winds, and thunderstorms. The techniques, observations and theory that have been used to achieve these changes are documented together with the validation of the new software.