Observations on a Hurricane Wind Hazard Model Used to Map Extreme Hurricane Wind Speed

The hurricane hazard modeling requires a hurricane wind field model and a hurricane track model, that are generally developed based on historical wind speed and track records. Several hurricane hazard models have been proposed for engineering applications; the model used to map the hurricane wind hazard shown in several editions of a U.S. national standard is extensively documented in open literature. A term, which is expressed as the product of the hurricane translation velocity and gradient of the wind velocity relative to the moving center of the vortex in the governing equation (i.e., fluid momentum equation) to model hurricane wind field, is neglected in various publications. However, the effect of using this approximation on the calculated wind field has not been elaborated. In the research reported in this paper, the effect of this approximation on the wind field is investigated through numerical analysis. Also, a possible simplification of the track model used to estimate the extreme hurricane wind for the U.S. national standard is explored. The use of different wind field models and track models to estimate the extreme hurricane wind is carried out. Comparison of the estimated return period values of hurricane wind speeds is presented. (C) 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.