• Wind and Structures
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.71-88
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• 2004

In this paper the capacity of Covariance Proper Transformation (CPT) analyses to provide information about the wind loading mechanisms of bluff bodies is investigated through the application to square cylinders. CPT is applied to the fluctuating pressure distributions on a single cylinder, as well as on a pair of cylinders in the tandem and side by side arrangements, with different separations. Both smooth and turbulent flow conditions are considered. First, through the analysis of the contributions of each CPT mode to the total fluctuating aerodynamic forces, a correspondence between modes and aerodynamic components is sought, which is then verified through examination of the mode shapes. When a correspondence between modes and aerodynamic components is found, an attempt is made to separate the different frequency contributions to the aerodynamic forces, provided by each mode. From the analyses it emerges that (a) in most cases each mode is associated to one single force component, that (b) retaining a limited number of modes allows reproducing the aerodynamic forces with a rather good accuracy, and that (c) each mode is mainly associated with one frequency of excitation.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.37-56
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• 2014

The evaluation of pressure fields acting on slender structures under wind loads is currently performed in experimental aerodynamic tests. For wind-sensitive structures, in fact, the knowledge of global and local wind actions is crucial for design purpose. This paper considers a particular slender structure under wind excitation, representative of most common high-rise buildings, whose experimental wind field on in-scale model was measured in the CRIACIV boundary-layer wind tunnel (University of Florence) for several angles of attack of the wind. It is shown that an efficient reduced model to represent structural response can be obtained by coupling the classical structural modal projection with the so called blowing modes projection, obtained by decomposing the covariance or power spectral density (PSD) wind tensors. In particular, the elaboration of experimental data shows that the first few blowing modes can effectively represent the wind-field when eigenvectors of the PSD tensor are used, while a significantly larger number of blowing modes is required when the covariance wind tensor is used to decompose the wind field.