• Wind and Structures
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.17-41
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• 2016

To address the uncertainty of the flight trajectories caused by the turbulence and gustiness of the wind field over the roof and in the wake of a building, a 3-D probabilistic trajectory model of flat-type wind-borne debris is developed in this study. The core of this methodology is a 6 degree-of-freedom deterministic model, derived from the governing equations of motion of the debris, and a Monte Carlo simulation engine used to account for the uncertainty resulting from vertical and lateral gust wind velocity components. The influence of several parameters, including initial wind speed, time step, gust sampling frequency, number of Monte Carlo simulations, and the extreme gust factor, on the accuracy of the proposed model is examined. For the purpose of validation and calibration, the simulated results from the 3-D probabilistic trajectory model are compared against the available wind tunnel test data. Results show that the maximum relative error between the simulated and wind tunnel test results of the average longitudinal position is about 20%, implying that the probabilistic model provides a reliable and effective means to predict the 3-D flight of the plate-type wind-borne debris.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.169-189
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• 2010

This paper describes the use of coupled Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and Rigid Body Dynamics (RBD) in modelling the aerodynamic behaviour of wind-borne plate type objects. Unsteady 2D and 3D Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) CFD models are used to simulate the unsteady and non-uniform flow field surrounding static, forced rotating, auto-rotating and free-flying plates. The auto-rotation phenomenon itself is strongly influenced by vortex shedding, and the realisable k-epsilon turbulence modelling approach is used, with a second order implicit time advancement scheme and equal or higher order advection schemes for the flow variables. Sequentially coupling the CFD code with a RBD solver allows a more detailed modelling of the Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI) behaviour of the plate and how this influences plate motion. The results are compared against wind tunnel experiments on auto-rotating plates and an existing 3D analytical model.