Large Eddy Simulation of Wind Loads on a Low-rise Structure and Comparison with Wind Tunnel Results

This work presents estimates of time histories of pressure coefficients at several taps on the roof of a 1/200 model of a 200 x 100 x 20 ft low-rise building with a 1/24 slope gable roof building. The estimates were obtained using a large eddy simulation (LES). The first and second moments as well as peaks for the time histories are compared with those obtained in boundary layer wind-tunnel measurements at the University of Western Ontario. Mean pressures compared reasonably well with the corresponding wind tunnel measurements while peak values were underestimated significantly. The current computations resulted in a T.I. near 0.05, less than half the value reported for the wind tunnel. Practically T.I provoked with the presence of spires and roughness elements whereas numerically is imposed on the incoming mean flow via spectral syntheses. It is noted that the computation times required to obtain records of length comparable to wind tunnel records are, at present, prohibitively large.