A numerical study on load effects of low-rise buildings in a wind-blown sand environment

Abstract

The transportation process of wind-blown sand, represented by sandstorms, occurs frequently in arid and semi-arid regions. The combined action of wind and sand impact load in a wind-sand environment poses a serious threat to the safety of construction, transportation and other engineering structures. However, most of the current structural designs only considers the effect of wind, and there is little detailed research on the surface load distribution of structures caused by sand impact, which leads to uncertainty in the safety assessment of engineering structures in wind-sand areas. In this paper, low-rise buildings which are easily damaged in strong wind-sand environments are taken as the research object. A numerical model of coupling turbulent wind field and particle motion was then established, and the reliability of the numerical simulation results was verified through wind tunnel experiments. Finally, the wind-sand movement around the low-rise building model and the load distribution characteristics on the building surface are simulated under different wind speed and sand concentration conditions. The results show that the edges and corners of engineering structures are subject to more severe particle erosion-abrasion. As the sand concentration increases in the flow field, the wind speed and the wind load acting on the structures weakens. Whereas the sand impact load increases with the increment of wind speed and sand concentration. The increased effect of sand particles on the total load can be considered by amplifying the wind load shape coefficient on the windward side. This study is helpful to understand the mechanism of sand wind-induced damage on low-rise buildings, and provides basic tools and a theoretical basis for the wind and wind-blown sand resistance design and performance optimization of engineering structures.