Characteristics of wind pressures on retractable dome roofs and external peak pressure coefficients for cladding design

Abstract

This study investigates the characteristics of wind pressures on retractable dome roofs. Wind tunnel tests were conducted on spherical dome roofs with various wall height-span ratios (0.1–0.5) and opening ratios (0%, 10%, 30% and 50%). After the characteristics of mean and peak pressure coefficients were examined, the peak pressure coefficients on closed dome roofs were compared with those of the current Japanese wind load code (AIJ-RLB (2015)), and peak pressure coefficients on dome roofs with openings for cladding design were proposed. The analysis results can be summarized as follows. As wall height-span ratio increases, the absolute values of mean and minimum pressure coefficients increase, and the absolute values of minimum pressure coefficients on the outermost interior of open dome roofs increase with opening ratio. For cladding design of dome roofs with openings, dome roofs were divided into two zones, and negative and positive peak pressure coefficients were proposed based on experimental results.