High intensity wind load evaluation and mitigation for buildings

保护加拿大的建筑环境不受极端风和其他自然灾害的影响，对于拯救生命和维持社区的繁荣是必要的。虽然风工程已经取得了重大进展，但对靠近地面的龙卷风和下击暴流的特征及其对建筑环境的影响尚不清楚。目前对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必须在紧急情况下保持运行的基本建筑物，没有考虑龙卷风和下击暴发。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击暴流对基本建筑的影响。这将首先通过使用数值和独特的最先进的风工程环境和能源(WindEEE)穹顶来产生风负荷数据来解决，这是一个三维风试验室，可以配置为产生不同的气流类型，包括下击暴流和龙卷风。一旦风荷载数据产生，将开发旨在减少风引起的损害的缓解方法。利用风荷载对建筑物整体形状和拐角细节的依赖关系，将使用数学模型来确定哪种局部墙体和屋顶拐角修改在减少这些风荷载方面效果更好。将进一步开发最终实现整体空气动力学建筑设计的计算机方法。这项研究将使通过测试各种类型的小型建筑模型和近乎最佳表现的建筑形状和角落细节的数据库获得的空气动力学数据可供设计人员使用。这将使工程师和建筑师能够设计出能够承受龙卷风和下爆力的基本建筑。它还将导致开发新的减风技术和建筑方法，以减少新的和现有的基本建筑因风造成的灾难性破坏，从而保持加拿大在减灾方面的领先地位。

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.