How to Calculate Wind Loads with Engineering Software

The influence of wind shear and consistent wind loads on a structure is often overestimated. As an engineering professional, you need to know how to calculate wind loads correctly to develop buildings that will last a long time. You can determine wind loads and measures to withstand wind damage using the right engineering software.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Things You’ll Need:

• Blueprints

Account for Wind Loads in Engineering Plans

1. Accumulate information on average wind speed at the ground level for upcoming projects. You can use county almanacs and state-climate data to determine average speeds as a good base for calculating wind loads with software.
2. Calculate the total height of your engineering project including antennas and other items not included in initial plans. Wind loads have an increasing influence on engineering projects as the elevation increases due to decreasing air pressure.
3. Search through your engineering software's property database to find the tensile strength of building materials on a particular building. You need to know the type of metals used in skyscrapers to determine the maximum wind loads that these buildings can take before experiencing damage.
4. Review buildings and other structures surrounding your project site to determine the influence of artificial wind tunnels. The narrow space between homes and storage facilities can cause strong gusts of wind that potentially damage sidewalls over a long period.
5. Apply the highest recorded gusts for each season in your project area to calculate the highest-expected wind loads. These wind speeds will be substantially higher than average, but they provide a good basis for designing sturdy buildings that withstand extreme conditions.
6. Execute wind load simulations on your computer at every step of the design process to head off major engineering issues. Buildings, electrical towers and other structures that have the same capability to handle wind loads from top to bottom are considered sturdy.
7. Navigate upward and downward gusts past a simulation of your project to account for wind loads from all directions. The wind force applied from different angles will provide you with an accurate depiction of the stress of wind loads on every part of a structure.

Tips & Warnings

• Delve into the history of engineering to find structures that have successfully dealt with high wind loads. Engineering feats, such as the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty and the CN Tower in Toronto, provide case studies for wind-load solutions. You should recreate these feats on engineering software to determine how designers dealt with the issue of high wind speed.

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