CFD simulation of the wind field around pyramidal roofed single-story buildings

Abstract

For the structural safety to counter the wind load, the roof shape and the roof slope both the constraints play an important role. The present study demonstrates the pressure distribution on the pyramidal roofs of a pentagonal and hexagonal plan low-rise single-story building due to the wind load through CFD simulation. This type of roofed building may be considered as one of the cyclone shelters as it is shown by post-disaster studies that pyramidal roof is found better than other roof shapes to resist the wind load. The modeling of the building and the meshing of the models have been carried out in ANSYS ICEM CFD, while the simulation process has been performed in ANSYS Fluent. To obtain the results, ANSYS CFD-Post has been utilized. For the simulation of the turbulent wind flow, a realizable k–ε turbulent model is used in the present study. In the current study, ten different building models (five with pentagonal plan and five with hexagonal plan) are generated having roof angles 20°, 25°, 30°, 35° and 40°, and all are simulated for 0°–45° wind direction @15° interval. The pressure coefficient contours for different wind directions for varying roof slopes are mapped in the present study. Results show that the hexagonal pyramidal roof surface building has low-pressure coefficients and better chances of survival than the pentagonal pyramidal roof surface building.