• Wind and Structures
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.199-213
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• 2022

The current study investigates the dynamic effects in the tornado-structure response of an aeroelastic self-supported lattice transmission tower model tested under laboratory simulated tornado-like vortices. The aeroelastic model is designed for a geometric scale of 1:65 and tested under scaled down tornadoes in the Wind Engineering, Energy and Environment (WindEEE) Research Institute. The simulated tornadoes have a similar length scale of 1:65 compared to the full-scale. An extensive experimental parametric study is conducted by offsetting the stationary tornado center with respect to the aeroelastic model. Such aeroelastic testing of a transmission tower under laboratory tornadoes is not reported in the literature. A multiaxial load cell is mounted underneath the base plate to measure the base shear forces and overturning moments applied to the model in three perpendicular directions. A three-axis accelerometer is mounted at the level of the second cross-arm to measure response accelerations to evaluate the natural frequencies through a free-vibration test. Radial, tangential, and axial velocity components of the tornado wind field are measured using cobra probes. Sensitivity analyses are conducted to assess the variation of the structural dynamic response associated with the location of the tornado relative to the lattice transmission tower. Three different layouts representing the change in the orientation of the tower model relative to the components of the tornado-induced loads are considered. The structural responses of the aeroelastic model in terms of base shear forces, overturning moments, and lateral accelerations are measured. The results are utilized to understand the dynamic response of self-supported transmission towers to the tornado-induced loads.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.567-598
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• 2014

In this paper, wind induced aerodynamic loads on a standard tall building have been evaluated through large-eddy simulation (LES) technique. The flow parameters of an open terrain were recorded from the downstream of an empty boundary layer wind tunnel (BLWT) and used to prescribe the transient inlet boundary of the LES simulations. Three different numerically generated inflow boundary conditions have been investigated to assess their suitability for LES. A high frequency pressure integration (HFPI) approach has been employed to obtain the wind load. A total of 280 pressure monitoring points have been systematically distributed on the surfaces of the LES model building. Similar BLWT experiments were also done to validate the numerical results. In addition, the effects of adjacent buildings were studied. Among the three wind field generation methods (synthetic, Simirnov's, and Lund's recycling method), LES with perturbation from the synthetic random flow approach showed better agreement with the BLWT data. In general, LES predicted peak wind loads comparable with the BLWT data, with a maximum difference of 15% and an average difference of 5%, for an isolated building case and however higher estimation errors were observed for cases where adjacent buildings were placed in the vicinity of the study building.

• Asian Journal of Atmospheric Environment
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.288-297
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• 2015

In this study, wind conditions and its energy potential have been assessed by conducting a Weibull analysis of the wind speed data (over the period of 2002-2011) measured from a port city (Mongla) and an isolated island (Sandwip) in Bangladesh. The monthly mean wind speed at Mongla ranged from 1.60 m/s (December) to 2.47 m/s (April). The monthly values of Weibull shape parameter (k) were from 1.27 to 2.53. In addition, the values of the scale parameter (c) and the monthly wind power density ranged from 1.76 to 2.79 m/s and 3.95 to $17.45W/m^2$, respectively. The seasonal mean wind speed data varied from 1.72 (fall) to 2.29 m/s (spring) with the wind power density from 5.33 (fall) to $14.26W/m^2$ (spring). In the case of Sandwip, the results were comparable to those of Mongla, but moderate reductions in all the comparable variables were observed. The wind data results of these two areas have been compared with those of eight other locations in the world with respect to wind power generation scale. According to this comparison, the wind power generation scale for Mongla and Sandwip was adequate for stand-alone small/micro-scale applications such as local household consumption, solar-wind hybrid irrigation pumps, and battery charging.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.451-462
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• 2016

Photovoltaic energy conversion becomes main focus of many researches due to its promising potential as source for future electricity and has many advantages than the other alternative energy sources like wind, solar, ocean, biomass, geothermal etc. In Photovoltaic power generation multilevel inverters play a vital role in power conversion. The three different topologies, diode-clamped (neutral-point clamped) inverter, capacitor-clamped (flying capacitor) inverter and cascaded h-bridge multilevel inverter are widely used in these multilevel inverters. Among the three topologies, cascaded h-bridge multilevel inverter is more suitable for photovoltaic applications since each pv array can act as a separate dc source for each h-bridge module. This paper presents a single phase Cascaded H-bridge five level inverter for grid-connected photovoltaic application using sinusoidal pulse width modulation technique. This inverter output voltage waveform reduces the harmonics in the generated current and the filtering effort at the input. The control strategy allows the independent control of each dc-link voltages and tracks the maximum power point of PV strings. This topology can inject to the grid sinusoidal input currents with unity power factor and achieves low harmonic distortion. A PID control algorithm is implemented in Arm Processor LPC2148. The validity of the proposed inverter is verified through simulation and is implemented in a single phase 100W prototype. The results of hardware are compared with simulation results. The proposed system offers improved performance over conventional three level inverter in terms of THD.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.301-322
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• 2013

Recent major post-hurricane damage assessments in the United States have reported that the most common damages result from the loss of building roof coverings and subsequent wind driven rain intrusion. In an effort to look further into this problem, this paper presents a full-scale (Wall of Wind --WoW--) investigation of external and underneath wind pressures on roof tiles installed on a low-rise building model with various gable roofs. The optimal dimensions for the low-rise building that was tested with the WOW are 2.74 m (9 ft) long, 2.13 m (7 ft) wide, and 2.13 m (7 ft) high. The building is tested with interchangeable gable roofs at three different slopes (2:12; 5:12 and 7:12). The field tiles of these gable roofs are considered with three different tile profiles namely high (HP), medium (MP), and low profiles (LP) in accordance with Florida practice. For the ridge, two different types namely rounded and three-sided tiles were considered. The effect of weather block on the "underneath" pressure that develops between the tiles and the roof deck was also examined. These tests revealed the following: high pressure coefficients for the ridge tile compared to the field tiles, including those located at the corners; considerably higher pressure on the gable end ridge tiles compared to ridge tiles at the middle of the ridge line; and marginally higher pressure on barrel type tiles compared to the three-sided ridge tiles. The weather blocking of clay tiles, while useful in preventing water intrusion, it doesn't have significant effect on the wind loads of the field tiles. The case with weather blocking produces positive mean underneath pressure on the field tiles on the windward side thus reducing the net pressures on the windward surface of the roof. On the leeward side, reductions in net pressure to a non-significant level were observed due to the opposite direction of the internal and external pressures. The effect of the weather blocking on the external pressure on the ridge tile was negligible.