Wind Load Simulation on Cylindrical Air-supported Structure

Abstract

More and more air-supported structures are used. However，the current wind load shape coefficient can not match engineering design. The CFD technology is utilized to simulate the wind load pressure distribution of rigid half cylindrical shape used for air-supported structures frequently. The shape is found by finite element software ANSYS, and then put into the flow field. RNG ĸ-ε turbulence model based on the Reynolds averaging method and FLUENT software are chose to investigate wind load variation along different wind direction (0°, 30°, 60°, 90°). The results show that the distribution range of extreme negative pressure area is from - 0.9 to - 1.01 at different wind direction angles, and it is easy to separate and form extreme negative pressure area at the two corners close to the windward side. Therefore, enough attention should be paid to the extreme positive pressure area at the bottom of the windward side and the extreme negative pressure area at the top of the membrane face.