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Wind loads & cladding pressures
By understanding structural wind loads and cladding pressures, architects and engineers design safer, more efficient and reliable buildings and structures. Because wind tunnel tests address the specific complexities of each project, they are a key tool for efficient structural design.
CPP’s clients can
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Reduce material costs and prevent waste by knowing where structural wind loads and cladding pressures are lower, and
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Increase the building’s safety and reliability by understanding where wind effects on structures and cladding are higher.
For a clear example of the value of wind engineering, see how the New Orleans Arena, wind engineered by CPP, survived Hurricane Katrina.
The animated clip shows vortices that develop around corners of buildings. As the clip shows, wind interacts with buildings and structures in complex and often surprising ways.
Wind Loading Codes/Standards or Testing?
Although wind loading codes and standards give general guidelines for structural designs, wind tunnel testing offers specific information about a particular design that the standards and codes cannot. In fact, the codes used in the United States specify wind tunnel testing for buildings that have unusual geometries or that are located in high-wind regions.
As the wind loading standards themselves state:
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Codes and standards do not account for unique or unusual structural shapes
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Codes and standards do not accurately address crosswind effects for even simple shapes
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Codes and standards represent wind climate and the effects of buildings and terrain in a simplified manner
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Codes and standards cannot account for interference from surrounding buildings
Wind tunnel testing can account for all of these variables and their complex interactions in ways that wind loading codes cannot.
CPP has performed hundreds of structural and cladding wind tunnel tests over the decades. The principals and staff of CPP have published many technical papers about structural wind engineering.
