Analysis of Wind Pressure Data on Components and Cladding of Low-Rise Buildings.

This paper presents a methodology for analyzing wind pressure data on cladding and components of low-rise buildings. The aerodynamic force acting on a specified area is obtained by summing up pressure time series measured at that area's pressure taps times their respective tributary areas. This operation is carried out for all sums of tributary areas that make up rectangles with aspect ratios not exceeding four. The peak of the resulting area-averaged time series is extrapolated to a realistic storm duration by the translation method. The envelope of peaks over all wind directions is compared with current specifications. Results for one low-rise building for one terrain condition indicate that these specifications can seriously underestimate pressures on gable roofs and walls. Comparison of the proposed methodology with an alternative method for assignment of tributary areas and area averaging is shown as well.

Wind-Pressure Coefficients on Low-Rise Building Enclosures Using Modern Wind-Tunnel Data and Voronoi Diagrams.

External pressure coefficients specified in the ASCE 7-10 Standard, used to determine design wind pressures for the components and cladding of buildings, are developed from wind tunnel test data that date back 30-50 years. In recent decades, advances in pressure measurement and computer technology have made it possible to obtain simultaneous pressure records, with high sampling rates, at many more wind tunnel pressure taps than was the case in the past. This paper proposes a method to calculate external pressure coefficients using aerodynamic wind tunnel databases such as Tokyo Polytechnic University's large, publicly available database. Voronoi diagrams are used to assign tributary areas to irregularly spaced pressure taps. User-defined grids of various sizes and shapes are placed at various offsets over the building surface to perform area-averaging of the pressure time series. Considering all wind directions for which measurements are obtained in the wind tunnel, the peak pressures are determined assuming a Gumbel distribution, and are extrapolated to a standard storm duration. The external peak pressure coefficients are then plotted as functions of their corresponding area for various zones of the building enclosure to produce plots similar to the ASCE 7-10 specifications on components and cladding. Results for three gable buildings analyzed in the paper show that the current ASCE 7-10 specifications can severely underestimate the external pressure coefficients for components and cladding of low-rise buildings.