Wind effects on a full-scale frame

Abstract

The design of structural members entails computation of members' stresses generated due to various loads such as dead load, live load, wind load, earthquake load etc. This study restricts itself to the determination of load effects arising out of wind load. The subject of this research is the building located in the WERFL field site, Texas Tech University, Lubbock. The building is comprised of three portal frames. The focus is on determining load effects at three locations for the middle frame of the building

Influence coefficients are obtained for various tap locations on the building. The pressure coefficients obtained from model scale testing of WERFL at UWO boundary layer wind tunnel are combined with the influence coefficients to obtain the desired load effects. This has been enabled through MATLAB programs developed for this research. The marginal relative frequency distribution for these load effects is compared to Gaussian and Gamma distributions to understand the applicability of these distributions in generalizing the wind tunnel results.

Load effects are computed for this building using ASCE 7 recommended pressure coefficients. These values have been compared with wind tunnel load effects. The magnitude of load effect obtained using ASCE 7-98 pressure coefficient values is higher than the mean value obtained using wind tunnel data for all load effects except for uplift in leeward column and is observed to lie in the tail region of the marginal distribution of load effect generated using wind tunnel data.