The development of a field measurement instrumentation system for low-rise construction

In the last three decades several comprehensive field measurement programs have produced significant insight into the wind effects on low-rise structures. The most notable and well published of these efforts are measurements being collected at the Wind Engineering Field Laboratory (WERFL) at Texas Tech University, measurements on low-rise structures in Silsoe, England and measurements on groups of low-rise structures collected in Aylesbury, England. Complementary to these efforts, an additional full-scale field investigation program has recently collected meteorological, pressure, strain and displacement data on a low-rise structure in Southern Shores, North Carolina. To date over seventy-five hundred data sets have been collected at the Southern Shores site in a variety meteorological conditions up to and including hurricane-force winds. This paper provides details of the system, its development, and preliminary assessment of its performance. A description of the field site, the instrumented structure, and the instrumentation system is provided. In addition, an example of the data collected during three hurricanes is presented. The primary goal of this paper is to provide the reader with the necessary technical details to appropriately interpret data from this experiment, which will be presented in future publications currently under development.