Field Measurements and Wind Tunnel Tests of Typhoon Effects on a Low-rise Building with Gable Roof

The proposed project aims to further understand typhoon wind characteristics and assess wind effects on a typical low-rise building under typhoon conditions through field measurements. Feedback from the field measurements will be used for the verification and improvement of the modelling techniques in wind tunnel tests. The proposed study will be conducted in two phases that are closely related. The first involves the development of our on-going field measurement program for which a full-scale low-rise building with gable roof has been built and many instrumentation works have been done. With the support of this grant, the project needs to be expanded to produce a highly valuable set of field data that represents the real-time wind fields and wind-induced pressures on the experimental building during typhoons, which is the basis of this study. In Phase 2, a series of wind tunnel tests will be conducted for investigating the wind effects on the low-rise building. Moreover, the field measurements will be compared with the model test results for the verification of the wind tunnel test results. The output of this project will be of importance to the wind-resistant design of buildings and structures in typhoon or hurricane-prone regions. This is particularly relevant to Hong Kong because the city frequently experiences typhoons.