• Wind and Structures
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• 제19권3호
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• pp.339-352
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• 2014

This paper discusses the appropriate duration for basic gust wind speeds in wind loading codes and standards, and in wind engineering generally. Although various proposed definitions are discussed, the 'moving average' gust duration has been widely accepted internationally. The commonly-specified gust duration of 3-seconds, however, is shown to have a significant effect on the high-frequency end of the spectrum of turbulence, and may not be ideally suited for wind engineering purposes. The effective gust durations measured by commonly-used anemometer types are discussed; these are typically considerably shorter than the 'standard' duration of 3 seconds. Using stationary random process theory, the paper gives expected peak factors, $g_u$, as a function of the non-dimensional parameter ($T/{\tau}$), where T is the sample, or reference, time, and ${\tau}$ is the gust duration, and a non-dimensional mean wind speed, $\bar{U}.T/L_u$, where $\bar{U}$ is a mean wind speed, and $L_u$ is the integral length scale of turbulence. The commonly-used Durst relationship, relating gusts of various durations, is shown to correspond to a particular value of turbulence intensity $I_u$, of 16.5%, and is therefore applicable to particular terrain and height situations, and hence should not be applied universally. The effective frontal areas associated with peak gusts of various durations are discussed; this indicates that a gust of 3 seconds has an equivalent frontal area equal to that of a tall building. Finally a generalized gust response factor format, accounting for fluctuating and resonant along-wind loading of structures, applicable to any code is presented.

• Wind and Structures
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• 제20권6호
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• pp.763-791
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• 2015

"Wind and Ports" is a European project that has been carried out since 2009 to handle wind forecast in port areas through an integrated system made up of an extensive in-situ wind monitoring network, the numerical simulation of wind fields, the statistical analysis of wind climate, and algorithms for medium-term (1-3 days) and short term (0.5-2 hours) wind forecasting. The in-situ wind monitoring network, currently made up of 22 ultrasonic anemometers, provides a unique opportunity for detecting high resolution thunderstorm records and studying their dominant characteristics relevant to wind engineering with special concern for wind actions on structures. In such a framework, the wind velocity of thunderstorms is firstly decomposed into the sum of a slowly-varying mean part plus a residual fluctuation dealt with as a non-stationary random process. The fluctuation, in turn, is expressed as the product of its slowly-varying standard deviation by a reduced turbulence component dealt with as a rapidly-varying stationary Gaussian random process with zero mean and unit standard deviation. The extraction of the mean part of the wind velocity is carried out through a moving average filter, and the effect of the moving average period on the statistical properties of the decomposed signals is evaluated. Among other aspects, special attention is given to the thunderstorm duration, the turbulence intensity, the power spectral density and the integral length scale. Some noteworthy wind velocity ratios that play a crucial role in the thunderstorm loading and response of structures are also analyzed.