• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.287-300
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• 2022

Unconventional structures are getting more popular in recent days. Large-span roofs are used for many structures, such as airports, stadiums, and conventional halls. Identifying the pressure distribution and wind load acting on those structures is essential. This paper offers a collaborative study of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations and wind tunnel tests for assessing wind pressure distribution for a building with a combined slender curved roof. The hybrid turbulence model, Improved Delayed Detached Eddy Simulation (IDDES), simulates the open terrain turbulent flow field. The wind-induced local pressure coefficients on complex roof structures and the turbulent flow field around the structure were thus calculated based upon open terrain wind flow simulated with the FLUENT software. Local pressure measurements were investigated in a boundary layer wind tunnel simultaneous to the simulation to determine the pressure coefficient distributions. The results predicted by CFD were found to be consistent with the wind tunnel test results. The comparative study validated that the recommended IDDES model and the vortex method associated with CFD simulation are suitable tools for structural engineers to evaluate wind effects on long-span complex roofs and plan irregular buildings during the design stage.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.231-251
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• 2016

This paper presents the experimental results of the wind tunnel tests for three symmetric, rectangular, tall building models on a typical open terrain considering the torsional motion-induced vibrations. The time histories of the wind pressure on these models under different reduced wind speeds and torsional amplitudes are obtained through the multiple point synchronous scanning pressure technique. Thereafter, the characteristics of both the Root Mean Square (RMS) coefficients and the spectra of the base shear/torque in the along-wind, across-wind, and torsional directions, respectively, are discussed. The results show that the RMS coefficients of the base shear/torque vary in the three directions with both the reduced wind speeds and the torsional vibration amplitudes. The variation of the RMS coefficients in the along-wind direction results mainly from the change of the aerodynamic forces, but sometimes from aeroelastic effects induced by torsional vibration. However, the variations of the RMS coefficients in the across-wind and torsional directions are caused by more equal weights of both the aerodynamic forces and the aeroelastic effects. As such, for the typical tall buildings, the modification of the aerodynamic forces in the along-wind, across-wind, and torsional directions, respectively, and the aeroelastic effects in the across-wind and torsional directions should be considered. It is identified that the torsional vibration amplitudes and the reduced wind speeds are two significant parameters for the aerodynamic forces on the structures in the three directions.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.399-417
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• 2013

The structural vibration suppression with active constrained layer damping (ACLD) was widely studied recently. However, the literature seldom concerned with the vibration control on flow-induced vibration using active constrained layer. In this paper the wind induced vibration of cantilevered beam is analyzed and suppressed by using random theory together with a velocity feedback control strategy. The piezoelectric material and frequency dependent viscoelastic layer are used to achieve effective active damping in the vibration control. The transverse displacement and velocity in time and frequency domains, as well as the power spectral density and the mean-square value of the transverse displacement and velocity, are formulated under wind pressure at variable control gain. It is observed from the numerical results that the wind induced vibration can be significantly suppressed by using a small outside active voltage on the constrained layer.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.12 no.5
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• pp.441-455
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• 2009

Studying the spatial distribution in coherent fields such as turbulence and turbulence-induced force is important to model and evaluate turbulence-induced forces and response of structures in the turbulent flows. Turbulence field-based coherence function is commonly used for the spatial distribution characteristic of the turbulence-induced forces in the frequency domain so far. This paper will focus to study spectral coherent structure of the turbulence and induced forces in not only the frequency domain using conventional Fourier transform-based coherence, but also temporo-spectral coherence one in the time-frequency plane thanks to wavelet transform-based coherence for better understanding of the turbulence and force coherences and their spatial distributions. Effects of spanwise separations, bluff body flow, flow conditions and Karman vortex on coherent structures of the turbulence and induced pressure, comparison between turbulence and pressure coherences as well as intermittency of the coherent structure in the time-frequency plane will be investigated here. Some new findings are that not only the force coherence is higher than the turbulence coherence, the coherences of turbulence and forces depend on the spanwise separation as previous studies, but also the coherent structures of turbulence and forces relate to the ongoing turbulence flow and bluff body flow, moreover, intermittency in the time domain and low spectral band is considered as the nature of the coherent structure. Simultaneous measurements of the surface pressure and turbulence have been carried out on some typical rectangular cylinders with slenderness ratios B/D=1 (without and with splitter plate) and B/D=5 under the artificial turbulent flows in the wind tunnel.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.48 no.4
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• pp.435-453
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• 2013

A new computational approach for the rain load on the transmission tower is presented to obtain the responses of system subjected to the wind and rain combined excitations. First of all, according to the similarity theory, the aeroelastic modeling of high-voltage transmission tower is introduced and two kinds of typical aeroelastic models of transmission towers are manufactured for the wind tunnel tests, which are the antelope horn tower and pole tower. And then, a formula for the pressure time history of rain loads on the tower structure is put forward. The dynamic response analyses and experiments for the two kinds of models are carried out under the wind-induced and wind-rain-induced actions with the uniform and turbulent flow. It has been shown that the results of wind-rain-induced responses are bigger than those of only wind-induced responses and the rain load influence on the transmission tower can't be neglected during the strong rainstorm. The results calculated by the proposed method have a good agreement with those by the wind tunnel test. In addition, the wind-rain-induced responses along and across the wind direction are in the same order of response magnitude of towers.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.589-608
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• 2017

A novel probabilistic approach is presented for estimating the equivalent static wind loads that produce a static response of the structure, which is "equivalent" in a probabilistic sense, to the extreme dynamic responses due to the unsteady pressure random field induced by the wind. This approach has especially been developed for complex structures (such as stadium roofs) for which the unsteady pressure field is measured in a boundary layer wind tunnel with a turbulent incident flow. The proposed method deals with the non-Gaussian nature of the unsteady pressure random field and presents a model that yields a good representation of both the quasi-static part and the dynamical part of the structural responses. The proposed approach is experimentally validated with a relatively simple application and is then applied to a stadium roof structure for which experimental measurements of unsteady pressures have been performed in boundary layer wind tunnel.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.431-443
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• 2020

The modern tall buildings are often constructed as an unconventional plan and as twin buildings. Wind load on the tall building is significantly influenced by the presence of another building in the near vicinity. So, it is imperative to study wind forces on an unconventional plan shaped tall building. Mean wind pressure coefficients of a square and 'H' plan shape tall buildings are investigated using wind tunnel experiments. The experiments were carried out for various wind directions from 00 to 900 at an interval of 300 and various locations of the identical interfering building. The experimental results are presented at the windward face from the viewpoint of effects on cladding design. To quantify the interference effects, interference factors (I.F) are calculated. Mean pressure coefficients of both models are compared for isolated and interference conditions. The results show that pressure reduces with an increase in wind angle till 600 wind direction. The interfering building at full blockage interference condition generates more suction than the other two conditions. The interference factor for both models is less than unity. H-plan building model is subjected to a higher pressure than the square model.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.363-374
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• 2010

Appropriate scaling methods for wind tunnel modelling of building internal pressures induced through a dominant opening were investigated. In particular, model cavity volume distortion and geometric scaling of the opening details were studied. It was found that while model volume distortion may be used to scale down buildings for wind tunnel studies on internal pressure, the implementation of the added volume must be done with care so as not to create two cavity resonance systems. Incorrect scaling of opening details was also found to generate incorrect internal pressure characteristics. Furthermore, the effective air slug or jet was found to be longer when the opening was near a floor or sidewall as evidenced by somewhat lower Helmholtz frequencies. It is also shown that tangential flow excitation of Helmholtz resonance for off-centre openings in normal flow is also possible.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.1-14
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• 2002

Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) have the capability to develop functional relationships between input-output patterns obtained from any source. Thus ANN can be conveniently used to develop a generalised relationship from limited and sometimes inconsistent data, and can therefore also be applied to tackle the data obtained from wind tunnel tests on building models with large number of variables. In this paper ANN model has been developed for predicting wind induced pressures in various zones of a Gable Building from limited test data. The procedure is also extended to a case wherein interference effects on a gable roof building by a similar building are studied. It is found that the Artificial Neural Network modelling is seen to predict successfully, the pressure coefficients for any roof slope that has not been covered by the experimental study. It is seen that ANN modelling can lead to a reduction of the wind tunnel testing effort for interference studies to almost half.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.289-302
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• 2023

Insulating glass units (IGUs) have been widely used in buildings in recent years due to their superior thermal insulation performance. However, because of the panel reciprocating motion and fatigue deterioration of sealants under long-term wind loads, many IGUs have the problem of early failure of watertight properties in real usage. This study aimed to propose a statistical method for wind-induced deflection of IGU panels during the whole life service period, for further precise analysis of the accumulated fatigue damage at the sealed part of the edge bond. By the estimation of the wind occurrence regularity based on wind pressure return period, the events of each wind speed interval during the whole life were obtained for the IGUs at 50m height in Beijing, which are in good agreement with the measured data. Also, the wind-induced deflection analysis method of IGUs based on the formula of airspace coefficient was proposed and verified as an improvement of the original stiffness distribution method with the average relative error compared to the test being about 3% or less. Combining the two methods above, the deformation of the outer and inner panes under wind loads during 30 years was precisely calculated, and the deflection and stress state at selected locations were obtained finally. The results show that the compression displacement at the secondary sealant under the maximum wind pressure is close to 0.3mm (strain 2.5%), and the IGUs are in tens of thousands of times the low amplitude tensile-compression cycle and several times to dozens of times the relatively high amplitude tensile-compression cycle environment. The approach proposed in this paper provides a basis for subsequent studies on the durability of IGUs and the wind-resistant behaviors of curtain wall structures.