The effect of surroundings with different separation distances on surface pressures on low-rise buildings

Very large roof suctions on low-rise buildings occur for isolated buildings during both fullscale experiments and wind tunnel tests performed by many investigators. This paper investigates the sensitivity of these high suctions to the presence of multiple surrounding building configurations. This study uses the Wind Engineering Research Field Laboratory (WERFL) building studied during the CSU/TTU Cooperative Program in Wind Engineering as a basic building shape. A model of the WERFL structure was constructed to a 1:50 scale and instrumented with multiple pressure ports. Pressure taps on the 1:50 scale building model were connected to two 48-channel PSI transducer units. A large number of "dummy" models of similar dimensions were constructed to represent surrounding buildings. These model buildings were arranged in various symmetric configurations with different separation distances, and placed in the Industrial Wind Tunnel of the Wind Engineering and Fluids Laboratory, Colorado State University. Measurements include mean, RMS and peak pressures, street canyon velocity profiles and laser-sheet flow visualizations. Shelter effects produced by the surrounding buildings on the central instrumented building were found to be significant, such that flow patterns are displaced and mean and peak induced loads are significantly different from the isolated building base case. The surface pressures of master WERFL model inside the urban street canyons were determined by the prognostic model FLUENT using the four differences closure approximation and FDS, large eddy simulations methodology. Calculations are compared against fluid modeling from wind-tunnel test. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.