Wind Engineering investigates how wind affects built structures and the interactions with the immediate environment in interaction with local microclimate.

Urban wind fields altered by built environments have far-reaching consequences for air quality, comfort and amenity in exterior and open spaces. The dynamics of the interactions between wind and structure lead to physical risks from critical loads that extend the vulnerability of a building and its dense development to significant health risks for pedestrians and occupants.

Classical methods can hardly predict detailed load patterns

The design features of typical buildings and other high-rise structures, which are usually unfavourable from an aerodynamic point of view, cause wind turbulences or intensify them, sometimes by a multiple. These wind scenarios are characterised by strong updrafts and downdrafts. Air masses can be transported from high altitudes down to ground level.

The complex shape of typical residential and commercial buildings for aesthetic reasons means that wind pressure and wake effects caused by circulation and turbulence are difficult to localise experimentally. Corresponding measurements on site can only be made only at specific locations in the flow field. Therefore, they do not allow spatially coherent inventories of the expected impact scenarios of a project. They are cost-intensive and time-consuming. This applies equally to wind tunnel tests, wherein it is additionally necessary to scale down the research object to the size of the wind tunnel. This causes long known scaling problems and it is very difficult to obtain representative information on complex loading patterns and their environmental characteristics.

Virtual Engineering is a viable and cost-effective alternative

A viable and cost-effective alternative is Virtual Engineering, in particular the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) method, in which any load situation, even disastrous, can be investigated in the early planning stages of a project. Numerical modelling enables the study of planning objects of any size at full scale, from a single building to a quarter or an entire city.

Numerically conducted experiments provide any desired level of detail in the analysis at virtually any point in time and at any location of the object under investigation. Experiments and results are fully revisable and can be made available to stakeholders quickly and transparently to advise on further adaptation measures.

The integration of structural mechanics simulations with Finite Element Analysis (FEA) provides insight into other vulnerable building features within the building envelope. Combined CFD-FEM simulations enable realistic total energy balances of building performance that can incorporate site-specific weather factors, seasonal climate variability and long-term climate projections.