Determination of wind load factors of long-span roof structures using rigid model wind tunnel test

Abstrcat The wind load has recently become a major concern in wind-resistant design of long-span roof structures due to their characteristics: light, flexible, lightly damped,low natural frequency and so on. Flexible roofs will suffer from wind-induced dynamic response under high suction fluctuating pressure when wind flows over the long-span roof structures. Wind load factor is the essential parameter in wind resistance design of long-span structures in order to consider wind dynamic effects. A multi-modal force method combined with rigid model wind tunnel test is provided to estimate the wind load factor of long-span flexible roofs. In the present method, the contributions of higher vibration modes can be taken into account. Comparing with the results from the perfect aeroelastic model wind tunnel tests and the time domain method, it is found that the results predicted by the present method have high precision.