THE FULL-SCALE SIGNIFICANCE, ON GLASS CLADDING PANELS, OF DATA OBTAINED FROM WIND-TUNNEL MEASUREMENTS OF PRESSURE-FLUCTUATIONS ON BUILDING CLADDING

This paper presents the interim results of a study into the significance, in full scale, of wind tunnel measurements of pressure fluctuations on building cladding. These interim results have shown that the limitations in the frequency response of the pressure tapping tubes, can result in significant errors if direct integration of wind tunnel data is used to determine the design wind pressures for the building cladding, if the cladding has a high frequency response. However, it has been found that the practise of taking the peak pressures determined from the wind tunnel measurements, within the equivalent full-scale period of 1 h for a frequency response of 1 Hz, to be equivalent to 3 s constant pressures for the purpose of design, may be adequate for 15 min storm duration but may not be adequate for much longer storm duration. It is concluded that it is important that the probability distributions need to be more accurately determined than the current methods used, to minimise possible errors, and that further work is required to determine the frequency response of glass cladding panels.