Investigation of Wind Pressure on Fabric Structures with Conical Form Using CFD

Abstract

Conical form is one of the standard and efficient fabric structure forms which is a suitable choice to cover small and intermediate spans. Since weight of fabric structures is not significant, wind pressure is the governing load in their design process. However, building codes do not suggest design wind loads for irregular shaped structures such as fabric structures. In this paper, effective parameters of wind pressure on conical fabric structures are investigated by using computational fluid dynamics. 48 cases of wind flow around conical formed fabric structures are modeled and analyzed in Fluent computer program. The effects of geometric characteristics of models, namely principal slope angel of form, proportional diameter of top circle of conical form, and lowest start angel of main curve, on wind pressure distribution is investigated. Among considered parameters, principal slope angel of conical form is recognized to be the most impressive parameter on wind pressure distribution.

Keywords

• fabric structures
• conical form
• wind
• cfd