Technical Seminar on Essential Elements for Wind Tunnel Testing

Date, time & venue 
2011-06-10;6:30-8:00pm;Seminar Room, HKIE HQ

Programme Highlights

Wind tunnel testing has been increasingly used as a tool to predict wind effects on structures and the environment. In recent years, the availability of wind tunnels in Hong Kong has facilitated many model studies and wind assessments to be carried out locally. However, as there are obviously different degrees of sophistication available and assumptions made at various test facilities, it is important for the wind tunnel operators and the end-users to understand and ensure some essential elements of modeling technique in order to produce satisfactory predictions of the full scale phenomena. Otherwise, wind tunnel testing will yield data which are inadequate and even misleading.

The present presentation provides a discussion concerning the essential elements for wind tunnel testing and the extent of proximity for the scaled topography required in model studies for wind effects on structures and urban environment. This discussion is based on several literature reviews which concluded with sufficient evidence that increasingly significant errors occur in modeling of flow conditions when the geometric model scales are reduced below 1/500. Thus it is inadequate, if not impossible, to use a separate small topographical (1/2500 or smaller) scale model study to determine the wind profile characteristics due to the wide far-field area of terrain for a much larger scale model study of wind effects. The discrepancy of these model measurements using wind profiles matching from a separate small scale topographical study as compared to an extensive 1/400 scale model study in a large wind tunnel working section will be illustrated.

Speaker

Prof. John C.K. Cheung, BE(Newcastle) PhD(Monash) Grad. Cert. Higher Ed.(Adelaide) FIEAust CPEng NPER

Associate Professor John Cheung joined the City University of Hong Kong in the Department of Building and Construction in 2011, after more than thirty years wind tunnel research, testing and consultancy experience in Australia. He has been Senior Research Fellow at Monash University, Senior Engineer/Director of MEL Consultants Pty. Ltd. and Professor at the University of Adelaide. He has been involved in wind load analysis and conducted wind tunnel tests for many projects for Hong Kong, including Queens Road Centre, West Kowloon Residential Development and the Stonecutters Bridge. He was Chairman of the Australasian Wind Engineering Society AWES during 2000-2007 and was elected as a Life Member of AWES in 2010. He is currently a Fellow and on the National Professional Engineers Register of the Institution of Engineers Australia.

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