• Wind and Structures
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.249-274
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• 2015

Long-span cable-stayed bridges exhibit some features which are more critical than typical long span bridges such as geometric and aerodynamic nonlinearities, higher probability of the presence of multiple vehicles on the bridge, and more significant influence of wind loads acting on the ultra high pylon and super long cables. A three-dimensional nonlinear fully-coupled analytical model is developed in this study to improve the dynamic performance prediction of long cable-stayed bridges under combined traffic and wind loads. The modified spectral representation method is introduced to simulate the fluctuating wind field of all the components of the whole bridge simultaneously with high accuracy and efficiency. Then, the aerostatic and aerodynamic wind forces acting on the whole bridge including the bridge deck, pylon, cables and even piers are all derived. The cellular automation method is applied to simulate the stochastic traffic flow which can reflect the real traffic properties on the long span bridge such as lane changing, acceleration, or deceleration. The dynamic interaction between vehicles and the bridge depends on both the geometrical and mechanical relationships between the wheels of vehicles and the contact points on the bridge deck. Nonlinear properties such as geometric nonlinearity and aerodynamic nonlinearity are fully considered. The equations of motion of the coupled wind-traffic-bridge system are derived and solved with a nonlinear separate iteration method which can considerably improve the calculation efficiency. A long cable-stayed bridge, Sutong Bridge across the Yangze River in China, is selected as a numerical example to demonstrate the dynamic interaction of the coupled system. The influences of the whole bridge wind field as well as the geometric and aerodynamic nonlinearities on the responses of the wind-traffic-bridge system are discussed.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.245-254
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• 2023

In this paper, the wind-induced response of Jiayuguan wooden building (world cultural heritage) in Northwest China was studied. ANSYS finite element software was used to establish four kinds of building models under different working conditions and carry out modal analysis. The simulation results were compared with the field dynamic test results, obtaining the model which reflects the real vibration characteristics of the wooden tower. Time history data of fluctuating wind speed was obtained by MATLAB programming. Time domain method and ANSYS were used to analyze the wind-induced vibration response time history of Jiayuguan wooden building, obtaining the displacement time history curve of the structure. It was suggested that the wind-induced vibration coefficient of Jiayuguan wooden building is 1.76. Through analysis of the performance of the building under equivalent static wind load, the maximum displacement occurs in the three-story wall, gold column and the whole roof area, and the maximum displacement of the building is 5.39 cm. The ratio of the maximum stress value to the allowable value of wood tensile strength is 45 %. The research results can provide reference for the wind resistant design and protection of ancient buildings with similar structure to Jiayuguan wooden tower.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.129-146
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• 2024

Aiming at the problem of non-stationary wind field simulation of downbursts, a non-stationary down-burst generation system was designed by adding a nozzle and program control valve to the inlet of the original wall jet model. The computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method was used to simulate the downburst. Firstly, the two-dimensional (2D) model was used to study the outflow situation, and the database of working conditions was formed. Then the combined superposition of working conditions was carried out to simulate the full-scale measured downburst. The three-dimensional (3D) large eddy simulation (LES) was used for further verification based on this superposition condition. Finally, the wind tunnel test is used to further verify. The results show that after the valve is opened, the wind ve-locity at low altitude increases rapidly, then stays stable, and the wind velocity at each point fluctuates. The velocity of the 2D model matches the wind velocity trend of the measured downburst well. The 3D model matches the measured downburst flow in terms of wind velocity and pulsation characteris-tics. The time-varying mean wind velocity of the wind tunnel test is in better agreement with the meas-ured time-varying mean wind velocity of the downburst. The power spectrum of fluctuating wind ve-locity at different vertical heights for the test condition also agrees well with the von Karman spectrum, and conforms to the "-5/3" law. The vertical profile of the maximum time-varying average wind veloci-ty obtained from the test shows the basic characteristics of the typical wind profile of the downburst. The effectiveness of the downburst generation system is verified.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.371-391
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• 2021

Tornadoes are the most devastating meteorological natural hazards. Many empirical and theoretical numerical models of tornado vortex have been proposed, because it is difficult to carry out direct measurements of tornado velocity components. However, most of existing numerical models fail to explain the physical structure of tornado vortices. The present paper proposes a new empirical numerical model for a tornado vortex, and its load effects on a low-rise and a tall building are calculated and compared with those for existing numerical models. The velocity components of the proposed model show clear variations with radius and height, showing good agreement with the results of field measurements, wind tunnel experiments and computational fluid dynamics. Normal stresses in the columns of a low-rise building obtained from the proposed model show intermediate values when compared with those obtained from existing numerical models. Local forces on a tall building show clear variation with height and the largest local forces show similar values to most existing numerical models. Local forces increase with increasing turbulence intensity and are found to depend mainly on reference velocity Uref and moving velocity Umov. However, they collapse to one curve for the same normalized velocity Uref / Umov. The effects of reference radius and reference height are found to be small. Resultant fluctuating force of generalized forces obtained from the modified Rankine model is considered to be larger than those obtained from the proposed model. Fluctuating force increases as the integral length scale increases for the modified Rankine model, while they remain almost constant regardless of the integral length scale for the proposed model.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.559-575
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• 2016

In order to investigate the influence of different blade positions on aerodynamic load and wind loads and load-effects of large scale wind turbine tower under the halt state, we take a certain 3 MW large scale horizontal axis three-blade wind turbine as the example for analysis. First of all, numerical simulation was conducted for wind turbine flow field and aerodynamic characteristics under different halt states (8 calculating conditions in total) based on LES (large eddy simulation) method. The influence of different halt states on the average and fluctuating wind pressure coefficients of turbine tower surface, total lift force and resistance coefficient, circular flow and wake flow characteristics was compared and analysed. Then on this basis, the time-domain analysis of wind loads and load-effects was performed for the wind turbine tower structure under different halt states by making use of the finite element method. The main conclusions of this paper are as follows: The halt positions of wind blade could have a big impact on tower circular flow and aerodynamic distribution, in which Condition 5 is the most unfavourable while Condition 1 is the most beneficial condition. The wind loads and load-effects of disturbed region of tower is obviously affected by different halt positions of wind blades, especially the large fluctuating displacement mean square deviation at both windward and leeward sides, among which the maximum response occurs in $350^{\circ}$ to the tower top under Condition 8; the maximum bending moment of tower bottom occurs in $330^{\circ}$ under Condition 2. The extreme displacement of blade top all exceeds 2.5 m under Condition 5, and the maximum value of windward displacement response for the tip of Blade 3 under Condition 8 could reach 3.35 m. All these results indicate that the influence of halt positions of different blades should be taken into consideration carefully when making wind-resistance design for large scale wind turbine tower.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.89-98
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• 2018

For most full-scale tall buildings the Reynolds number of a flow field around a circular cylinder under strong wind is usually greater than $2{\times}10^7$, which is difficult to achieve in most wind tunnel tests. To explore the wind characteristics of tall cylindrical buildings with equidirectional grooves from subcritical to transcritical flow ($6.6{\times}10^4{\leq}Re{\leq}3.3{\times}10^5$ and $9.9{\times}10^6{\leq}Re{\leq}7.2{\times}10^7$), wind tunnel tests and full-scale large eddy simulations were carried out. The results showed that the rectangular-grooves narrow the wake width due to the downstream movement of the separation point and the deeper grooves cause smaller mean and fluctuating pressure while the peak pressure is little affected. Furthermore, the grooves lead to lower frequency of vortex shedding but the Strouhal number remains at the range from 0.15 to 0.35. The drag coefficient of the cylinders with grooves was found to be 2~3 times as large as that of smooth cylinders.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.97-115
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• 2000

The technique of proper orthogonal decomposition is potentially useful in specifying the fluctuating surface pressure field around structures. However there has been a degree of controversy over whether or not the calculated modes have physical meanings. This paper addresses this issue through consideration of the results of full scale experiments, and through an analytical investigation. It is concluded that the lower, most energetic modes are likely to reflect different fluctuating flow mechanisms, although no mode is likely to be associated with just one flow mechanism or vice versa. The higher, less energetic modes are likely to represent interactions between different flow mechanisms, and to be significantly affected by the number of measurement points and measurement errors. The paper concludes with a brief description of the application of POD to the problem of building ventilation, and the calculation of cladding pressures.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.25-41
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• 2017

The effects of finite cylinder free end shape on the mean and fluctuating wind pressures were investigated experimentally and numerically by using three different roof shapes: flat, conical and hemispherical. The pressure distributions on the roofs and the side walls of the finite cylinders partially immersed in a simulated atmospheric boundary layer have been obtained for three different roof shapes. Realizable $k-{\varepsilon}$ turbulence model was used for numerical simulations. Change in roof shapes has caused significant differences on the pressure distributions. When compared the pressure distributions on the different roofs, it is seen from the results that hemispherical roof has the most critical pressure field among the others. It is found a good agreement between numerical and experimental results.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.111-121
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• 2018

Experiments were conducted in a large-scale Ward-type tornado simulator to study tornado-like vortices. Both flow velocities and the pressures at the surface beneath the vortices were measured. An interpretation of these measurements enabled an assessment of the mean flow field as well as the mean and fluctuating characteristics of the surface pressure deficit, which is a manifestation of the flow fluctuation aloft. An emphasis was placed on the effect of the aspect ratio of the tornado simulator on the characteristics of the simulated flow and the corresponding surface pressure deficit, especially the evolution of these characteristics due to the transition of the flow from a single-celled vortex to a two-celled vortex with increasing swirl ratio.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.77 no.3
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• pp.355-368
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• 2021

The time-varying mean (TVM) component of non-stationary wind speeds is commonly extracted utilizing empirical mode decomposition (EMD) in practice, whereas the accuracy of the extracted TVM is difficult to be quantified. To deal with this problem, this paper proposes an approach to identify and extract the optimal TVM from several TVM results obtained by the EMD. It is suggested that the optimal TVM of a 10-min time history of wind speeds should meet both the following conditions: (1) the probability density function (PDF) of fluctuating wind component agrees well with the modified Gaussian function (MGF). At this stage, a coefficient p is newly defined as an evaluation index to quantify the correlation between PDF and MGF. The smaller the p is, the better the derived TVM is; (2) the number of local maxima of obtained optimal TVM within a 10-min time interval is less than 6. The proposed approach is validated by a numerical example, and it is also adopted to extract the optimal TVM from the field measurement records of wind speeds collected during a sandstorm event.