COMPARISON OF WIND-TUNNEL AND FULL-SCALE PRESSURE MEASUREMENT TESTS ON THE TEXAS-TECH BUILDING

A research team led by Mehta at Texas Tech University is carrying out wind-pressure measurements on a low-rise building [1]. These measurements made on the full-scale test building are expected to provide high-quality data for comparison with and verification of scale-model tests performed in wind tunnels. The objects of comparison were wind tunnel tests on models of the building, which were carried out at the Building Research Institute in Japan in order to verify techniques for wind tunnel testing for low-rise buildings. Three scale models, 1:65, 1:100 and 1:150, were used in the tests. The results showed good agreement of wind tunnel tests with tests on the full-scale test building in terms of mean wind-pressure coefficients. But the differences in the coefficients of rms and peak wind-pressure were found to be rather large. The frequency-response characteristics of the pressure-measurement system were one of the most important factors in producing the differences on these coefficients. The effect of size-reduction ratio on the mean and rms wind-pressure coefficients were found to be negligible within the range tested.