Wind Engineering - Wind Loads On Buildings

Wind Loads On Buildings

The design of buildings must account for wind loads, and these are affected by wind shear. For engineering purposes, a power law wind speed profile may be defined as follows:

\ v_z = v_g \cdot \left( \frac {z} {z_g} \right)^ \frac {1} {\alpha}, 0 < z < z_g

where:

= speed of the wind at height
= gradient wind at gradient height
= exponential coefficient


Typically, buildings are designed to resist a strong wind with a very long return period, such as 50 years or more. The design wind speed is determined from historical records using extreme value theory to predict future extreme wind speeds.

Read more about this topic:  Wind Engineering

Famous quotes containing the words wind, loads and/or buildings:

    A wind has started a little whirlpool
    of sand where the carpet ought to be,
    and shells lie
    by the preposterous feet
    of that woman who frets me, annihilates me,
    O she will kill me yet.
    Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)

    To measure life learn thou betimes, and know
    Toward solid good what leads the nearest way;
    For other things mild Heaven a time ordains,

    And disapproves that care, though wise in show,
    That with superfluous burden loads the day,
    And, when God sends a cheerful hour, refrains.
    John Milton (1608–1674)

    If the factory people outside the colleges live under the discipline of narrow means, the people inside live under almost every other kind of discipline except that of narrow means—from the fruity austerities of learning, through the iron rations of English gentlemanhood, down to the modest disadvantages of occupying cold stone buildings without central heating and having to cross two or three quadrangles to take a bath.
    Margaret Halsey (b. 1910)