Field Monitoring of Boundary Layer Wind Characteristics in Urban Area

The Beijing Meteorological Tower with a height of 325m is located in north central Beijing. There have been more than 30 anemometers installed at 15 different height levels on the tower, which provide an excellent opportunity to investigate boundary layer wind characteristics in an urban area for wind-resistant designs of tall buildings and high-rise structures.The proposed project will be conducted in two phases. The first involves the development of the on-going field measurement program, for which many instrumentation works have already been completed. It now needs to be expanded, with the support of this grant, in order to produce a highly valuable set of field data. In Phase 2, detailed analysis of the field data will be conducted to study the profiles of mean wind speed and atmospheric turbulence characteristics over a typical urban terrain. Furthermore, attempts will be made to investigate the boundary layer dust storm characteristics on the basis of the field measurements.The proposed comprehensive field measurement of wind speed and atmospheric turbulence characteristics from the numerous anemometers installed at the 325 m tower will provide a significant improvement of the knowledge of the boundary layer wind structure, wind climate, wind field modeling, and design wind speed in a typical urban area. The field measurement results will also provide essential information for improving numerical simulation techniques and developing structural design standards and guidelines. The output of this study will be particularly relevant to the wind-resistant design of tall buildings and high-rise structures in cities with similar meteorological systems to Beijing.