Modeling Aspects and Numerical Simulations in Wind Engineering
The study of complex wind effects especially needs to be assessed as constructions are pushed to the limit and are thus typically out of the range of engineering experience and standards. Current trends in the civil engineering industry comprise of high and slender buildings, long and flexible bridges as well as a revival of light-weight structures in general. This tendency to build lighter and more slender is also supported by the availability of new, high-strength materials. The resulting constructions are prone to complex wind response and an in-depth study has to be carried out for assessing wind-induced phenomena.
State of the art computational methods for simulating and quantifying the effects of wind represent a main field of research at the Chair of Structural Analysis. It is in response to the necessity of relying more and more on numerical methods for solving challenging problems which have gained significant ground in the academic and industrial community over the last decades. This is backed up by the rapidly increasing computing power.
Wind Engineering is a completely interdisciplinary field which involves meteorology, fluid mechanics, structural dynamics, statistics and probability theory, geographic information systems and some other branches. Although aerodynamics is one of the pillars of wind engineering, many of the applications in wind engineering are non-aeronautical. For structural engineers the evaluation of wind loads on constructions is the most important task and the clear goal is to design a safe and economical structure. A good understanding of fluid and structural mechanics is the necessary background for understanding the interaction between wind flow and civil engineering structures.
Computational Wind Engineering (CWE) is primarily defined as the use of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) for wind engineering applications, although it includes other approaches of computer modeling and in the broadest sense also field and wind-tunnel measurements supporting CWE model development and evaluation.
