Study Of Wind Loads And Wind-resistant Measures For Low-rise Buildings

The southeast coastal regions of China are those areas that typhoon often visits. Many buildings are damaged or broken down by typhoon. Previous wind disaster surveys indicate that most destroyed buildings in the disaster are low-rise buildings. Therefore it is of great significance to investigate the wind-load distribution characteristics of such buildings and accordingly find out the corresponding wind-resistant ways.Based on the date of full-scale measurements, modeling wind tunnel tests and numerical simulation researches of the wind loads on low-rise buildings available, many factors that affect wind pressure distribution on low-rise buildings have been fully analyzed. It reveled properly the principle of the changes of the surface mean pressures, local pressures, and fluctuating pressures with the building geometry, roof type and slope, eave configuration, parapet and dominant openings of wall.To reveal the effects of dominant openings of roof and wall on surface pressures of low-rise buildings, numerical simulation techniques are employed to study the internal and external pressure characteristics at the Wind Engineering Research Field Laboratory (WERFL) full-scale low-rise test building at Texas Tech University. The obtained numerical results are compared with those of the full-scale experiment and the validity and accuracy of the numerical simulation are demonstrated. On the fundament of this, a series of models with different opening locations, different opening ratios, different roof pitches and different eave heights are used to study the effects of dominant openings of wall on internal and external pressure of low-rise gable roofed buildings, so as to obtain the principle of the change of wind pressure with wall openings.Numerical simulation and parametric study are then conducted to investigate internal and external pressure of roof and wall on the low-rise gable roofed buildings with different opening locations on roof and wall (no opening, front roof opening, front wall and front roof openings, front wall and back roof openings, front wall and back wall and back roof openings), so as to obtain the principle of the change of wind pressure with roof openings.On the fundament of these and field investigations of the buildings damage in the areas of typhoon disasters of "Saomai" and "Rananim", the main factors that affect the wind-resistance capability of low-rise buildings have been analyzed and discussed, the design method and structure measure against typhoon of low-rise buildings have been proposed on low-rise buildings.