High intensity wind load evaluation and mitigation for buildings

保护加拿大的建筑环境免受极端大风和其他自然灾害的影响是拯救生命和维持社区繁荣的必要条件。尽管在风力工程方面取得了重大进展，但人们对接近地面的龙卷风和降爆的特征及其对建筑环境的影响仍不清楚。目前建筑物的设计和测试方法，包括医院、消防站和紧急避难所等在紧急情况下必须保持运行的基本建筑物，没有考虑龙卷风和倾盆大雨。拟议的研究将开发新的多尺度实验和计算机模型，以重现和减轻龙卷风和下冲对重要建筑物的影响。这将首先通过使用数字和独特的最先进的风工程环境与能源（WindEEE）圆顶生成风荷载数据来解决，这是一个三维风测试室，可以配置产生不同的气流类型，包括下爆和龙卷风。一旦产生风荷载数据，就将开发旨在减少风致损害的减灾方法。利用风荷载对建筑整体形状和角落细节的依赖性，数学模型将用于确定哪种局部墙壁和屋顶角落的修改将更好地减少风荷载。进一步的计算机方法将最终使整体空气动力学建筑设计成为可能。该研究将使通过测试各种类型的小型建筑模型获得的空气动力学数据以及接近最佳表现的建筑形状和角落细节的数据库可供设计师使用。这将使工程师和建筑师能够设计出能够承受龙卷风和倾盆大雨的基本建筑。它还将导致开发新的风缓解技术和施工方法，以减少新建和现有重要建筑中灾难性的风造成的损害，从而保持加拿大在减灾方面的领导地位。

Protecting Canada's built environment against extreme wind and other natural disasters is necessary to save lives and sustain the prosperity of communities. Although significant progress has been made in wind engineering, the characteristics tornadoes and downbursts close to the ground, and their impacts on the built environment, are not clearly understood. The current design and testing methods for buildings, including essential buildings such as hospitals, fire stations and emergency shelters that must remain operational during an emergency, do not take tornadoes and downbursts into consideration. The proposed research will develop novel multi-scale experimental and computer models to reproduce and mitigate tornado and downburst effects on essential buildings. This will be addressed first by generating wind load data using a numerical and the unique state-of-the-art Wind Engineering Environment and Energy (WindEEE) dome, a three-dimensional wind testing chamber which can be configured to produce different flow types including downbursts and tornados. Once the wind load data is generated, mitigation methodologies that aim at reducing wind-induced damage will be developed. Taking advantage of the wind load dependency on a building's overall shape and corner details, mathematical models will be used to identify which kind of local wall and roof corner modifications will work better in reducing those wind loads. Further computer methods that will ultimately enable overall aerodynamic building designs will be developed. The research will make the aerodynamic data obtained from testing various types of small-scale building models and database of near optimally performing building shapes and corner details available for designers. This will allow engineers and architects to design essential buildings that can withstand tornado and downburst forces. It will also lead to the development of new wind mitigation technology and construction methods to reduce catastrophic wind-induced damage in new and existing essential buildings, thus maintaining Canada's leadership in disaster mitigation.