Comparison of Tornado-induced pressures on building from CFD model with TTU experimental measurements

Abstract

Several studies have been carried out to investigate the magnitude of forces induced by tornado-like winds on buildings from experimental as well as computational side. The number of experimental studies evaluating the wind loads due to tornado-like vortices are comparatively greater in number than studies based on computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Furthermore, the limited number of CFD studies were often not validated by comparing with experimental measurements. In this work, an attempt is made to validate a CFD model by comparing the pressures induced by tornado-like vortices on a building model with experimental measurements from the tornado simulator at Texas Tech University (TTU). Results of the comparison indicate that the pressure coefficients obtained from the CFD model agree well with TTU experimental datasets. Besides, the effect of building size as well as the effect of flow structure of vortex on pressure coefficients on the building induced by tornado-like vortex is also investigated. It is observed that the pressures on the building can differ by up to 100% when different sizes of building is considered and the vortex with a single celled structure creates the most unfavorable loading conditions on the building model.