Processing of dynamic wind pressure loads for temporal simulations

Abstract

This paper discusses the processing of the wind loads measured in wind tunnel tests by means of multi-channel pressure scanners, in order to compute the response of 3D structures to atmospheric turbulence in the time domain. Data compression and the resulting computational savings are still a challenge in industrial contexts due to the multiple trial configurations during the construction stages. The advantage and robustness of the bi-orthogonal decomposition (BOD) is demonstrated through an example, a sail glass of the Fondation Louis Vuitton, independently from any tentative physical interpretation of the spatio-temporal decomposition terms. We show however that the energy criterion for the BOD has to be more rigorous than commonly admitted. We find a level of 99.95 % to be necessary in order to recover the extreme values of the loads. Moreover, frequency limitations of wind tunnel experiments are sometimes encountered in passing from the scaled model to the full scale structure. These can be alleviated using a spectral extension of the temporal function terms of the BOD.