Guidelines for the required time resolution of meteorological input data for wind-driven rain calculations on buildings

Abstract

An important question in wind-driven rain (WDR) calculations on buildings, either with semi-empirical formulae or with Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), concerns the required time resolution of the meteorological input data: wind speed, wind direction and horizontal rainfall intensity. Earlier work has indicated that the use of 10 min input data can provide accurate results, while the use of arithmetically averaged hourly data can yield significant underestimations in the calculated WDR amounts. This paper builds further on this earlier work by providing a detailed investigation of the parameters that determine the required time resolution for WDR calculations on building facades: (1) the averaging technique, (2) the building geometry and the position at the building facade and (3) the type of the rain event. It is shown that all three parameters can have a large influence on the required time resolution. Depending on these parameters, hourly or even daily wind and rain input data could provide accurate results, while in other situations they can lead to very large errors. Finally, guidelines for the required time resolution as a function of the influencing parameters are provided.