• Wind and Structures
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.307-328
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• 2016

This paper describes an investigation of the net wind loads on solar panels and wind loads on the underlying roof surface for panels mounted parallel to pitched roofs of domestic buildings. Typical solar panel array configurations were studied in a wind tunnel and the aerodynamic shape factors on the panels were put in a form appropriate for the Australian/New Zealand Wind Actions Standard AS/NZS 1170.2:2011. The results can also be used to obtain more refined design data on individual panels within an array. They also suggest values for the aerodynamic shape factors on the roof surface under the panels, based on a gust wind speed at roof height, of ${\pm}0.5$ for wind blowing parallel to the ridge, and ${\pm}0.6$ for wind blowing perpendicular to the ridge. The net loads on solar arrays in the middle portion of the roof are larger than those on the same portion of the roof without any solar panels, thus resulting in increased loads on the underlying roof structure.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.145-167
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• 2010

By using the 'failure' model approach, the effects of wind direction on the flight of sheathing panels from the roof of a model house in extreme winds was investigated. A complex relationship between the initial conditions, failure velocities, flight trajectories and speeds was observed. It was found that the local flow field above the roof and in the wake of the house have important effects on the flight of the panels. For example, when the initial panel location is oblique to the wind direction and in the region of separated flow near the roof edge, the panels do not fly from the roof since the resultant aerodynamic forces are small, even though the pressure coefficients at failure are high. For panels that do fly, wake effects from the building are a source of significant variation of flight trajectories and speeds. It was observed that the horizontal velocities of the panels span a range of about 20% - 95% of the roof height gust speed at failure. Numerical calculations assuming uniform, smooth flow appear to be useful for determining panel speeds; in particular, using the mean roof height, 3 sec gust speed provides a useful upper bound for determining panel speeds for the configuration examined. However, there are significant challenges for estimating trajectories using this method.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.36 no.6
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• pp.393-404
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• 2023

Skewness and kurtosis are important higher-order statistics for simulating non-Gaussian wind pressure series on low-rise buildings, but their predictions are less studied in comparison with those of the low order statistics as mean and rms. The distribution gradients of skewness and kurtosis on roofs are evidently higher than those of mean and rms, which increases their prediction difficulty. The conventional artificial neural networks (ANNs) used for predicting mean and rms show unsatisfactory accuracy in predicting skewness and kurtosis owing to the limited capacity of shallow learning of ANNs. In this work, the deep neural networks (DNNs) model with the ability of deep learning is introduced to predict the skewness and kurtosis on a low-rise building. For obtaining the optimal generalization of the DNNs model, the hyper parameters are automatically determined by Bayesian Optimization (BO). Moreover, for providing a benchmark for future studies on predicting higher order statistics, the data sets for training and testing the DNNs model are extracted from the internationally open NIST-UWO database, and the prediction errors of all taps are comprehensively quantified by various error metrices. The results show that the prediction accuracy in this study is apparently better than that in the literature, since the correlation coefficient between the predicted and experimental results is 0.99 and 0.75 in this paper and the literature respectively. In the untrained cornering wind direction, the distributions of skewness and kurtosis are well captured by DNNs on the whole building including the roof corner with strong non-normality, and the correlation coefficients between the predicted and experimental results are 0.99 and 0.95 for skewness and kurtosis respectively.

• Journal of Korean Association for Spatial Structures
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.101-109
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• 2024

In this study, the characteristics of wind pressure distribution on circular retractable dome roofs with a low rise-to-span ratio were analyzed under various approaching flow conditions by obtaining and analyzing wind pressures under three different turbulent boundary layers. Compared to the results of previous studies with a rise-to-span ratio of 0.1, it was confirmed that a lower rise-to-span ratio increases the reattachment length of the separated approaching flow, thereby increasing the influence of negative pressure. Additionally, it was found that wind pressures varied significantly according to the characteristics of the turbulence intensity. Based on these experimental results, a model for peak net pressure coefficients for cladding design was proposed, considering variations in turbulence intensity and height.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.99-117
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• 2020

This paper focuses on the processes of wind flow in atmospheric boundary layer, to produce realistic full scale pressures for design of low-rise buildings. CFD with LES turbulence closure is implemented on a scale 1:1 prototype building. A proximity study was executed computationally in CFD with LES that suggests new recommendations on the computational domain size, in front of a building model, apart from common RANS-based guidelines (e.g., COST and AIJ). Our findings suggest a location of the test building, different from existing guidelines, and the inflow boundary proximity influences pressure correlation and reproduction of peak loads. The CFD LES results are compared to corresponding pressures from open jet, full scale, wind tunnel, and the ASCE 7-10 standard for roof Component & Cladding design. The CFD LES shows its adequacy to produce peak pressures/loads on buildings, in agreement with field pressures, due to its capabilities of reproducing the spectral contents of the inflow at 1:1 scale.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.7 no.6
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• pp.373-392
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• 2004

This paper presents a methodology for spatial extrapolation of wind-induced pressure time series from a corner bay to roof locations on a low building away from the corner through the application of proper orthogonal decomposition (POD). The approach is based on the concept that pressure time series in the far field can be approximated as a linear combination of a series of modes and principal coordinates, where the modes are extracted from the full roof pressure field of an aerodynamically similar building and the principal coordinates are calculated from data at the leading corner bay only. The reliability of the extrapolation for uplift time series in nine bays for a cornering wind direction was examined. It is shown that POD can extrapolate reasonably accurately to bays near the leading corner, given the first three modes, but the extrapolation degrades further from the corner bay as the spatial correlations decrease.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.63-84
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• 2013

A semi-active mass damping (SMD) system with magnetorheological (MR) dampers focusing on low- and mid-rise buildings is proposed in this paper. The main purpose of this study is to integrate the reliable characteristics of the traditional tuned mass damper (TMD) and the superior performance of the active mass damper (AMD) to the new system. In addition, the commonly seen solution of deploying dense seismic dampers throughout the structure nowadays to protect the main structure is also expected to switch to the developed SMD system on the roof with a similar reduction performance. In order to demonstrate this concept, a full-size three-story steel building representing a typical mid-rise building was used as the benchmark structure to verify its performance in real life. A numerical model with the interpolation technique integrated was first established to accurately predict the behavior of the MR dampers. The success of the method was proven through a performance test of the designated MR damper used in this research. With the support of the MR damper model, a specific control algorithm using a continuous-optimal control concept was then developed to protect the main structure while the response of the semi-active mass damper is discarded. The theoretical analysis and the experimental verification from a shaking table test both demonstrated the superior mitigation ability of the method. The proposed SMD system has been demonstrated to be readily implemented in practice.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.439-459
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• 2013

Main objective of the present study is to determine the statistical properties and suitable probability distribution functions of spectral displacements from nonlinear static and nonlinear dynamic analysis within the frame work of Monte Carlo simulation for typical low rise and high rise RC framed buildings located in zone III and zone V and designed as per Indian seismic codes. Probabilistic analysis of spectral displacement is useful for strength assessment and loss estimation. To the author's knowledge, no study is reported in literature on comparison of spectral displacement including the uncertainties in capacity and demand in Indian context. In the present study, uncertainties in capacity of the building is modeled by choosing cross sectional dimensions of beams and columns, density and compressive strength of concrete, yield strength and elastic modulus of steel and, live load as random variables. Uncertainty in demand is modeled by choosing peak ground acceleration (PGA) as a random variable. Nonlinear static analysis (NSA) and nonlinear dynamic analysis (NDA) are carried out for typical low rise and high rise reinforced concrete framed buildings using IDARC 2D computer program with the random sample input parameters. Statistical properties are obtained for spectral displacements corresponding to performance point from NSA and maximum absolute roof displacement from NDA and suitable probability distribution functions viz., normal, Weibull, lognormal are examined for goodness-of-fit. From the hypothesis test for goodness-of-fit, lognormal function is found to be suitable to represent the statistical variation of spectral displacement obtained from NSA and NDA.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.7 no.6
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• pp.359-372
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• 2004

Wind tunnel model studies were carried out to determine the wind load distribution on tributary areas near the gable-end of large, low-rise buildings with high pitch planar and curved roof shapes. Background pressure fluctuations on each tributary area are described by a series of uncorrelated modes given by the eigenvectors of the force covariance matrix. Analysis of eigenvalues shows that the dominant first mode contributes around 40% to the fluctuating pressures, and the eigenvector mode-shape generally follows the mean pressure distribution. The first mode contributes significantly to the fluctuating load effect, when its influence line is similar to the mode-shape. For such cases, the effective static pressure distribution closely follows the mean pressure distribution on the tributary area, and the quasi-static method would provide a good estimate of peak load effects.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.4 no.5
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• pp.441-454
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• 2001

Conical vortices on roof corners of a prismatic low-rise building have been investigated by using the PIV(Particle Image Velocimetry) technique. The Reynolds number based on the free stream velocity and model height was $5.3{\times}10^3$. Mean and instantaneous vector fields for velocity, vorticity, and turbulent kinetic energy were measured at two vertical planes and for two different flow angles of $30^{\circ}$ and $45^{\circ}$. The measurements provided a clear view of the complex flow structures on roof corners such as a pair of counter rotating conical vortices, secondary vortices, and tertiary vortices. They also enabled accurate and easy measurement of the size of vortices. Additionally, we could easily locate the centers of the vortices from the ensemble averaged velocity fields. It was observed that the flow angle of a $30^{\circ}$ produces a higher level of vorticity and turbulent kinetic energy in one of the pair of vortices than does the $45^{\circ}$ flow angle.