Architecture Commons^™

Revealing Bluff-Body Aerodynamics On Low-Rise Buildings Under Tornadic Winds Using Numerical Laboratory Tornado Simulator, Ryan Honerkamp, Guirong Grace Yan, John Van De Lindt

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Tornadoes result in death and property loss in communities around the world. To quantify the actions of tornadoes on civil structures, researchers have built physical laboratory tornado simulators to simulate tornadoes in the lab environment and tested building models in the simulated tornadic wind field, which is similar to wind tunnel testing when quantifying the wind effects induced by straight-line winds. Unfortunately, physical tornado simulators are much less common than straight-line wind tunnels, leading to the lack of research on bluff-body aerodynamics on civil structures under tornadic winds. Considering that it is expensive to conduct experimental testing in physical tornado …