Effects of Geometrical Factors on Wind Pressure Characteristics of Cylindrical Roofs with Wind Tunnel Tests

Abstract

With wind tunnel tests, simultaneous pressure measurements are made on 4 cylindrical roof models with different rise-span ratios and roof inclinations. Effects of these geometrical factors on wind pressure characteristics of the roofs are investigated, including mean pressure coefficients, RMS pressure coefficients, skewness, kurtosis, and probability distributions of wind pressure. Results show that the mean vertical wind force coefficient of high rise-span ratio roof is larger than that of the low rise-span ration roof; the mean pressure coefficient distribution of the low rise-span ratio roof is similar to that of RMS pressure coefficients and the skewness (or the kurtosis); the vortex center line occurs at the windward edge for the low rise-span ratio roof with inclination 0°, which occurs at the roof apex for the high rise-span ratio roof. The roof inclination has more effects on the low rise-span ratio roof, the vortex moves from the windward edge to the apex for the roof with inclination 7.2°when the wind flows from the low eave to the high eave. The distribution of the skewness is strongly correlative to that of the kurtosis. The probability distributions of the roof edges and corners deviate obviously from the Guass distribution. If this point is ignored, the peak suction pressure will be underestimated.