A rationalised approach to the analysis of wind pressure measurements on buildings

Abstract In recent years there has been much interest in developing a rationalised procedure for the assessment of building design wind loads. The failure of single valued pressure coefficients to account for the measured variation in wind load had led to the proposal of alternative methods of predicting design loads, the most recent of these being the fully probabilistic method of Cook and Mayne which is based on extreme value analysis. This paper, presented for discussion, uses full-scale measurements to determine the ordered part of the wind load attributable to the wind dynamic pressure vector. By separating this ordered part, the influence of the building induced flow effects can be quantified. The procedure is described briefly and several examples are presented. It has been found from full-scale measurements that a single valued pressure coefficient, expressed as a function of wind direction, is a sufficient representation for the prediction of design wind load. The implication of this finding is that the quasi-static procedures of the British Standards Institution Code of Practice CP3 are appropriate.