EXTREME WIND LOAD DISTRIBUTIONS FOR LINEAR AND NONLINEAR DESIGN

Ever increasing demand for economical design and construction has led to the use of more sophisticated design methods which take into account nonlinear effects. Strictly speaking, for these design methods the known procedures to estimate the wind-induced reactions fail since their applicability is limited to linear systems. A new method, the load-response-correlation (LRC) method, which is presented in this paper, helps to bridge this gap, and enables the designing engineer to take into account a realistic spatial distribution of the wind loads which produce accurate peak structural responses for the linear design and a good approximation for nonlinear effects. Although the identification of the critical load distribution is based on the assumption of Gaussian properties of the load process, the method gives a very close approximation of the real load pattern for non-Gaussian load processes so that, for practical purposes, the confinement to Gaussian properties will be sufficient.