Effects of roof height on local pressure and velocity coefficients on building roofs

•The velocity ratios at a given location do not vary significantly with building height.•On the gable roof, Cp’s decrease or increase slightly (about 10%)•On the hip roof increases in Cp’s were observed near the hip lines. Failures of roofing systems occur due to high local suctions on tiles or shingles, or because of a different failure mechanism triggered by high local wind velocities near the roof surface. In the latter case, the local velocity can induce positive pressures on the lip of a windward facing shingle or tile, which are transmitted underneath, adding to the external surface negative pressure and causing an increase of the net uplift force. Building codes provide estimates of the peak pressure coefficients (peak Cp) based on 3-s gust in the oncoming wind at the roof height. As an approximation, these coefficients are generally taken to be independent of roof height and exposure. This implies that wind tests of roofing system behaviour carried out at one roof height can be used to infer the system behaviour for other roof heights. One of the main objectives of the present study was to examine the validity of this approximation. Regarding the second failure mechanism discussed above, knowledge of surface wind speed is a key element to assess the uplift forces on shingles. Building codes do not address the wind velocities close to the roof surface and estimate it based on the approach wind speed in terms of a wind speed ratio. So the second objective of the present research was to examine the ratio of local wind velocity close to the roof surface to the velocity at roof height in the approach flow and investigate the effect of height on the velocity ratios. Wind tunnel tests were performed on four different gable-hip roof buildings, at various wind directions. Both surface pressures and near-surface velocities were measured and normalized with respect to upwind flow conditions at mean roof height. The results confirm that the velocity ratios and peak Cp values on the gable roof do not vary markedly with building height with no more than 10% change found at most locations. For the velocity ratios a similar conclusion was reached on the hip roof. However, for the Cp values in the corner zones of the hip roofs increases with height were identified and further investigation is recommended.