A new method for obtaining wind loads by robustly combining part-model test results

The authors propose a new method to synthesise the time series of wind loads up the height of a building by robustly combining part-model test results and show that they are essentially identical to those sampled simultaneously from a complete model. A pressure-tapped circular cylinder was built to study and validate this segmented model test method using high frequency pressure integration. The detailed mathematical derivation of the synthetic wind load (SWL) method is presented. The dynamic response of a hypothetical chimney using uncorrected wind loads from two independent wind tunnel tests of the circular cylinder model is found to be underestimated considerably compared to using wind loads from simultaneously sampled pressure taps. How-ever, the dynamic response of the chimney using the SWL method to robustly combine the wind loads from two independent wind tunnel tests is almost identical to the dynamic response of the chimney using pressure tap data sampled simultaneously over the whole model. The establishment of this method is of great importance for the wind tunnel investigation of very high aspect ratio buildings where a model of the entire building cannot be tested within typical wind tunnel test sections because the Reynolds number would be too low, or the model section would be too narrow to contain the pressure tubes, and part-models need to be tested.

Automated summary

The authors propose a new method to synthesise wind load time series up the height of a building by combining part-model test results, and show that these synthetic wind loads are almost identical to those sampled simultaneously from a complete model. A circular cylinder model with pressure taps was used to study and validate this method, and a detailed mathematical derivation is presented. The results indicate that using uncorrected wind loads from two independent wind tunnel tests underestimates the dynamic response of a chimney, but using the method to combine wind loads from these two tests produces results similar to using simultaneously sampled pressure tap data. This method is of great importance for wind tunnel investigation of high aspect ratio buildings where testing the entire model is not possible.