Wind Engineering for the New European Court of Justice

In this paper, a description of the building aerodynamics studies for the new 4th extension of the European Court of Justice is undertaken. The investigations of the effects of the wind can be classified in two categories: those relating to the comfort of pedestrians in and around the complex and those relating to the overall wind loading and occupancy comfort of the structures. Unique to this arrangement are the twin 103m tall towers – slender and arranged in parallel with an aspect ratio of approximately 3.5:1. Pedestrian level wind climate studies were performed by using physical and numerical investigative techniques. In the assessment of human wind comfort conditions various approaches are discussed considering recent comparative efforts on a European level. An examination of the twin tower dynamic response to wind using Eurocode 1 showed tower accelerations to be below the chosen acceptable acceleration levels. Further dynamic time-history analysis of the towers, though, revealed higher than acceptable tower accelerations for specific wind directions. A response reduction system for the towers was developed in the form of Tuned Liquid Dampers (TLD) – the first known application of this system at this scale within Europe.