Development and validation of a mobile bluff-body to understand extreme wind loading

The collection of valuable wind loading data from winds generated by convective events presents a significant challenge to the wind engineering field. The spatial and temporal characteristics of these events make data acquisition challenging. A mobile bluff-body capable of recording wind-induced pressure data during extreme wind events was developed to solve this issue. The bluff-body is called mSWERF³ for mobile Smart Wind Engineering Research Facility. This paper introduces mSWERF³, discussing its design, the scaling techniques, and validation using full-scale data from the Silsoe cube and the Wind Engineering Research Field Laboratory (WERFL) building, and wind tunnel data from the Tokyo Polytechnic University (TPU) Aerodynamic Database. The validation includes a comparison of mean, standard deviation, minimum, and maximum pressure coefficients using the Silsoe and the TPU data, and a comparison of power spectra density of surface pressures on similar flow regimes using the WERFL and the TPU data. The results of these comparisons show that the aerodynamics of mSWERF³ is similar to those in larger full-scale buildings and wind tunnel models. Therefore, it is shown that mSWERF³ can provide valuable data to improve our understanding of extreme wind loading.