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Full-Scale Wind Pressure Measurements

Image of the Space Needle
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Jack Hochschild

Motivation and Objective

Each year, extreme wind events are responsible for about $100 billion of damage globally, and this number continues to increase. To design resilient buildings, engineers need tools that can accurately characterize wind loads. The goal of this project is to investigate the potential of high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics simulations for characterizing peak wind forces. We will do this by taking full-scale measurements on high-rise buildings and then comparing these with those predicted through CFD.

Methods

Image of a remote sensing datalogger, designed through this research effort

Wind tunnel testing several absolute sensors identified one which is able to measure turbulent wind pressures at relatively low wind speeds. Previous full-scale experiments primarily used differential sensors, which introduce problems associated with changing reference pressure, hindering direct comparison with CFD or wind tunnel results. A custom remote datalogger was designed featuring this absolute transducer. The datalogger was designed to be unobtrusive, low-cost, and low-profile/aerodynamic. One is shown on the right.

Image showing the locations of sensors placed on the two buildings

A network of these sensors has been deployed on two buildings: the Space Needle in Seattle, and 650 California St. in San Francisco. Simultaneously, large-eddy simulations (LES) were performed to simulate the wind loading on both buildings. The fluctuating wind pressure statistics predicted by LES were then compared with the field measurements, revealing that the LES can reproduce real-world wind loads, including the sensitivities to the turbulence in the incoming wind field.

Presentations

Publications

J. Hochschild and C. Gorlé, "Design and demonstration of a sensing network for full-scale wind pressure measurements on buildings", Journal of Wind Engineering and Industrial Aerodynamics, 250, 105760, 2024.

J. Hochschild and C. Gorlé, "Comparison of measured and LES-predicted wind pressures on the Space Needle", Journal of Wind Engineering and Industrial Aerodynamics, 249, 105749, 2024.

Resources

Convergence of full-scale measurements and large-eddy simulations to advance the prediction of high-rise building wind loads - see Appendix C for mote assembly and usage reference

Github hardware repo

Github software repo

Data - Space Needle deployment

Acknowledgements

This research is funded by NSF CAREER Award 1749610, and by Stanford's UPS endowment fund.