- Author
- Rigato, A. | Chang, P. | Simiu, E.
- Title
- Database-Assisted Design, Standardization, and Wind Direction Effects.
- Coporate
- Maryland Univ., College Park National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD
- Journal
- Journal of Structural Engineering, Vol. 127, No. 8, 853-860, August 2001
- Keywords
- wind direction | wind effects | databases | standardization | extreme values | meteorology | structural engineering
- Abstract
- The writers present a simple methodology, developed for use in design assisted by electronic aerodynamic and climatological databases (for short, database-assisted design), that allows a realistic assessment of wind directionality effects. The methodology is applied to typical low-rise industrial steel frame buildings with a rectangular shape in plan, located in hurricane-prone areas, and results are compared with results obtained by the procedure specified in the ASCE 7-98 Standard, which, for buildings, consists of applying a blanket directionality reduction factor Kd = 0.85 to wind effects obtained by disregarding directionality. The results show that, for significant numbers of buildings in hurricane-prone areas, the use of the ASCE procedure can result in the underestimation of wind effects corresponding to strength design. They also show that database-assisted design for wind loads offers the potential for significantly more risk-consistent, safer, and economical design for buildings with both known and unknown orientation.