Validation Of prediction method of roof snow depth for an isolated roof building : Prediction of unbalanced snow distribution due to wind on roofs based on CFD

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations of unbalanced snow accumulation on roofs were conducted for an isolated gableroof building with different roof pitches. Firstly, prediction accuracy of the present CFD method on the velocity and pressure fields around the building was confirmed by comparing their results with those obtained by wind tunnel experiment. Next, the unbalanced snow accumulation on the roofs was predicted with different wind velocities using the snowdrift model presented by the authors. The predicted results of drift load coefficients were examined by comparing them with the observational data, which was based in ISO code. It was confirmed that the observational data can generally be reproduced by the proposed CFD simulation method.