Hybrid CFD-Wind Tunnel Platform for Wind Load Evaluation of Tall Buildings

设计规范在高层建筑风荷载评估方面存在局限性。例如，这些规范(i)只考虑建筑物的基本形状，（ii）不能考虑可能产生重大影响的局部周围结构，以及（iii）没有区分天气风（规则风）和非天气风（雷暴风）。在这些情况下，可以使用风洞（WT）和计算流体动力学（CFD）工具。WT经历了50多年的验证和应用的漫长历程。然而，进行WT研究需要很长时间（几周）来构建模型和使用仪器。CFD可以克服这一挑战，特别是当并行计算能力得到适当利用时。然而，由于其相对较新的引入风荷载评估，CFD仍然需要更多的验证。本文将CFD与WT相结合，结合两者在鲁棒性和准确性方面的优点，对高层建筑空气动力学进行研究。******在本研究计划中，介绍了三个研究项目，以研究考虑天气和非天气（雷暴）风的高层建筑风荷载评估，如下：(i)开发和验证为共享内存多处理器（SMMP）系统的空气动力风荷载评估量身定制的高性能（HP） CFD代码。事实证明，SMMP系统比当前CFD代码中广泛使用的基于消息传递接口（MPI）的系统快3-4倍；（ii）在Ryerson U的亚音速WT上开发、校准和自动化一个WT测试平台，该平台将用于验证项目i中的CFD代码；（iii）开发并验证一个分析平台，将CFD/WT的空气动力学数据与气候和结构动态分析相结合，以预测建筑响应和等效静载荷。******预期的CFD/WT平台将用于分析几种建筑形状和周围配置，以覆盖上述设计规范中的空白，并开发一种简化的分析风荷载评估方法，适用于执业工程师和/或设计规范。此外，该平台使学术界和工业界的用户都可以通过网络界面免费使用该平台来获取他们的建筑负荷。这最终将有利于我们的社会，使建筑更能抵御由气候变化引起的自然风相关灾害，这是加拿大政府的两个优先研究领域。

Design codes have limitations when it comes to wind load evaluation for tall buildings. For example, the codes (i) consider only basic building shapes, (ii) can't account for local surrounding configuration which can be of a significant effect, and (iii) do not distinguish between synoptic (regular) and non-synoptic (thunderstorm) winds. Wind Tunnel (WT) and Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) tools can be used in those cases. WT has gone through a long journey of over five decades of validation and utilization. However, conducting a WT study requires a long lead time (several weeks) for the model construction and instrumentation. CFD can overcome this challenge especially when the parallel computational power is properly utilized. However, because of its relatively newer introduction to wind load evaluation, CFD still needs more validation. This proposal focuses on coupling CFD and WT tools to combine the merits of both in terms of robustness and accuracy to study tall buildings aerodynamics.******In this research proposal, three research programs have been introduced to investigate wind load evaluation of tall buildings considering snoptic and non-synoptic (thunderstorm) winds as follows: (i) Develop and validate a High-Performance (HP) CFD code tailored for aerodynamic wind load evaluation on Shared Memory Multi-Processor (SMMP) systems. SMMP systems prove to be 3-4 times faster than systems based on Message Passing Interface (MPI) widely used in current CFD codes; (ii) Develop, calibrate and automate a platform for WT testing at the subsonic WT at Ryerson U, which will be utilized to validate the CFD code in Program i; (iii) Develop and validate an analysis platform to couple the aerodynamic data from CFD/WT with climate and structural dynamic analyses to predict building responses and equivalent static loads. ******The anticipated CFD/WT platform will be employed to analyze several building shapes and surrounding configurations to cover the gaps in the design codes mentioned above and to develop a simplified analytical wind load evaluation approach suitable for practitioner engineers and/or for adoption in design codes. In addition, the platform enables users from both academia and industry to use the platform through a cyber interface at no cost to obtain their building loads. This will ultimately benefit our society to have buildings more resilient to natural wind-related disasters frequently driven by the climate change, which are two of the priority research areas of the Canadian Government.