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Pedestrian Level Wind Studies
Tall buildings can catch upper level winds and channel them to street level
resulting in severe gusting along footpaths or plaza areas being rendered
unattractive or unusable to patrons on windy days. Wind tunnel studies help to
identify these wind conditions whilst wind tunnel testing of new developments is
often required as part of Statutory Planning Regulations to maintain safe wind
climates for pedestrians.
Cladding Pressure Mapping
Wind tunnel testing can determine cladding wind loads on high-rise buildings,
providing either a single value of pressure for use in cladding design, or a
contour map of the design pressures over the complete facade surface,
highlighting critical areas of reduced loads. This information can permit lower
strength cladding to be used in these less critical areas, resulting in
significant savings in cladding costs.
Structural Studies / Direct Force Balance Testing
High-rise buildings standing above their surroundings are exposed to wind
force. The resulting movement depends on the structure. Wind tunnel tests
determine dynamic structural loads such as base bending moments and shear
forces.
Furthermore, wind tunnel studies can evaluate thermal comfort conditions in naturally ventilated 'tropical architecture' buildings.
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To find out more about these services, please email:
The centrepiece of Vipac's Wind Engineering Division is a large Boundary Layer Wind
Tunnel, one of the largest commercial facilities in the world and unique in
Australia and South East Asia. Developments are usually tested at a scale of
1:400, with all significant topographic features and details within a radius of
500m from the development site, providing clients with information that can not
be obtained from any other analytical, empirical or computational technique.
Over the last 25 years, the company has gained extensive expertise through
various large, multi-disciplinary projects throughout the world. Wind
engineering studies are carried out to determine the following: