CIVL3122 Wind Engineering

Lecture 2:

Wind Characteristics 1

Instructor: Xiaowei Deng

Email: xwdeng@hku.hk
Office: HW 6-28

1
 Wind as function of space and time
Wind: wind speed (and wind direction) is a function of space and time.

  
V = V ( X , t)
 Wind as function of space and time

At a particular site (x,y), wind speed is a function of height and time.

 
V = V ( z, t )
 Wind Climate and Wind Record

• Wind measurements
• Wind record
• Parent wind climate
• Extreme wind analysis
Wind Measurements – Anemometers
Wind Measurements – Anemometers
Wind Measurements – Anemometers
 Wind: Fluctuating components

Two components can be distinguished:

(1) High-frequency fluctuations
(2) Wind speed variations at much longer time periods
 Wind: Fluctuating components

To find the frequency components of fluctuations →

compute the power spectrum

Wind speed record (1 s resolution) of very long

time (> 10 years) → Van der Hoven spectrum
 Wind: Fluctuating components
(1) Micro-meteorological range → Wind turbulence →
fluctuations within 10-minutes or 1-hour
(2) Macro-meteorological range → Individual weather events
Patterns over many years → “Wind Climate”

http://www.hko.gov.hk/nhm/nhmsfcwdanie.htm
http://www.hko.gov.hk/wxinfo/intersat/satpic_s.s
html?pv_mode=playback
 Wind: Fluctuating components

(1) High-frequency fluctuations → from turbulence

(micro-meteorological range: seconds to minutes)
(2) Wind speed variations at much longer time periods
→ from “weather” effect (macro-meteorological
range: hours to days)

Extracted from “Architectural Aerodynamics”

 Wind: Fluctuating components

• There is little energy from wind speed

fluctuations inside the “spectral gap”
• The spectral gap provides a convenient way
to separate the two types of fluctuations
• Can use an “averaging time” of 1-hour, 10-
minute, or any value in between

10-min. mean wind speed

 Mean wind speed and Turbulent fluctuations

➢ A mean wind speed (and mean wind direction) can be found for every
hour (or every 10-minutes). The mean wind direction is expected to
be horizontal.
 Wind Climate
and Wind Speed Analyses
 Wind Records
• At a meteorological station, wind data may be measured at a fast
sampling rate (e.g., 1-s) but the archived record is usually at a slow rate.
• In the past, 10 min. or 1 hour was the common interval. Nowadays, it
may be 1 min. or 10 min.
• Wind turbulence signal is lost and the wind record only preserves the
slow wind speed variations caused by the macro-meteorological weather
events.
 Wind Records
➢ The commonest record interval used is 1 hour.
➢ The wind data archived for every hour include:
1. mean wind speed (hourly-mean)
2. mean wind direction (hourly-mean)
3. gust wind speed (hourly-maximum 3-s gust)
➢ Instead of hourly-means, the mean values are sometimes 10-min
means for the first 10 min. of an hour. For the gust, another gust
duration can be stored, e.g., 1-s gust.
#station : WGL
yyyymmdd hhmm dir mean gust
2005/2/1 0100 20 78 101
2005/2/1 0200 10 70 85
2005/2/1 0300 20 65 82
2005/2/1 0400 10 60 83
2005/2/1 0500 20 55 70
2005/2/1 0600 20 54 71
2005/2/1 0700 20 56 75
2005/2/1 0800 20 51 77
2005/2/1 0900 30 49 69
2005/2/1 1000 40 42 59
2005/2/1 1100 40 45 70
 Mean wind speed and Turbulent fluctuations
Gust wind speed
➢ If we chop the hour’s wind record into a number of, say N, sections, each of “gust
duration” =  = 3600/N s. And find the mean wind speed for each and every
section.
➢ The largest of N mean speeds is the “hourly-maximum -s gust speed”
➢ It will always be greater than the hourly-mean wind speed.
➢ It represents the maximum wind speed experienced in a given short duration of
time and is useful in predicting maximum wind loads.
 Parent Wind Climate
➢ The wind climate which is obtained statistically from the original
wind record over a number of years for a site is called the “parent
wind climate”.
➢ The parent wind climate is obtained from the parent distribution of
all wind speed data in the record.
Say, hourly-mean wind speeds are recorded:
• One year → 8,766 values of Ui ➔ 10 years → 87,660 data
• The first simple statistical analysis → the distribution or histogram of
these 87,660 wind speed data.
Wind Records
 Parent Wind Climate
An example:
Mean wind speed (m/s) No. of hours
U<3 5510
3<U<6 10760
6 < U <10 20100
10 < U < 16 25640
16 < U < 22 15600
22 < U < 28 7050
28 < U < 34 2610
U >34 330
Data → Histogram

probability density function (PDF): p(U ) = prob.( windspeed = U )

U
Cumulative density function (CDF): P(U ) = prob.( windspeed  U ) = −  p(V )dV
 Parent Wind Climate
An example:

PDF
CDF

• These “raw” PDF and CDF are

available for all directions or
for every wind sectors.
• They can be used to describe
the wind climate of a site.
• E.g., to draw the wind rose
(10-year record) →
 Parent Wind Climate
➢ However, to improve the resolutions and to comply with some
“theories”, it is a usual practice to fit a theoretical statistical distribution
to the observed distribution.
➢ Wind distributions have been measured all over the world and
mathematical distributions are tried to fit the distributions. It is found
that the distribution which can best all distributions is the “Weibull”
distribution.

k V 
k −1
  V k 
p(V ) =   exp −   
C C   C  
k
V 
− 
P(V ) = 1 − e C

Mode = C (in m/s)

Shape parameter = k
 Parent Wind Climate
Manual finding of most appropriate Weibull distribution to fit a set of data:
k
V 
− 
P(V ) = 1 − e C

k
V 
log1 − P(V ) = − 
C
log− log1 − P(V ) = k logV − k log C

Mean speed U<? Hours

P(<U) ln[-ln(1-P)] ln(U)
(m/s) m/s (<U)
U<3
3 5510 0.063 -2.734 1.099
3<U<6
6 16270 0.186 -1.582 1.792
6 < U <10
10 36370 0.415 -0.623 2.303
10 < U < 16
16 62010 0.708 0.207 2.773
16 < U < 22
22 77610 0.886 0.775 3.091
22 < U < 28
28 84660 0.966 1.222 3.332
28 < U < 34
34 87270 0.996 1.719 3.526
 Parent Wind Climate
Weibull distribution: k = 1.81 and C = 14.0 m/s

PDF
CDF
k
V 
− 
P(V ) = 1 − e C

Example: Prob(>U) U = ? m/s

Prob(>U) U = ? m/s
U, m/s P(U) Prob(>U) = 14.00*(-ln(Prob))^1/k
0.5 0.0024 0.9976 0.1 22.18
2.0 0.0289 0.9711 0.8 6.12 0.01 32.50
3.5 0.0777 0.9223 0.6 9.67
0.001 40.65
11.5 0.5033 0.4967 0.4 13.34
0.0001 47.64
21.0 0.8757 0.1243 0.2 18.20
0.1 22.18 0.00001 53.87
29.0 0.9764 0.0236
0.000001 59.57
33.0 0.9912 0.0088
1E-07 64.86
 Extreme Wind Climate

• Direct estimation of extreme wind speeds from parent wind data is

not reliable.
• Necessary to apply extreme value statistics.

➢ Extreme values are largest or smallest values drawn from a parent

distribution.
➢ For example, we can pick up the annual-maximum hourly-mean wind
speed from every year’s wind record.
➢ 12 years → 12 samples → extreme wind data.
➢ Thee data themselves form a distribution.
➢ Parent data is Weibull → distribution of extreme values always
converge towards the Fisher-Tippett Type I distribution.
 Extreme Wind Climate

Fisher-Tippett Type I distribution

(CDF):

P(V ) = exp− exp( − (V − M ))

M = mode; 1/ = dispersion

− log− logP(V ) =  (V − M ) = y

y = reduced variate
 Extreme Wind Climate
− log− logP(V ) =  (V − M ) = y
Example:
12-year record → 12 annual-maximum mean wind speed (V)
Rank, n Wind speed, V (m/s) Prob.(<V) = n/13 y = −log(−log(P))
1 24.5 0.077 -0.942
2 26.0 0.154 -0.627
3 28.0 0.231 -0.383
4 29.0 0.308 -0.164
5 30.0 0.385 0.046
6 31.0 0.462 0.257
7 32.5 0.538 0.480
8 34.0 0.615 0.723
9 35.0 0.692 1.000
10 37.0 0.769 1.338
11 39.0 0.846 1.789
12 42.5 0.923 2.525 1/ M
 Extreme Wind Climate

Return Period
• An event with a return period R years will have an average
probability of one occurrence every R years.

1 1
R= =
prob.(  V ) 1 − P(V )

Type 1 distribution: for large R →

= P(V ) = exp− exp(−  (V − M ))
1
1−
R

 1
 log 1 −  = − exp−  (V − M )
1
−
R  R

1
VR = M + log R

 Extreme Wind Climate

Example: M (m/s) = 29.743

Rank, n Wind speed, V (m/s) 1/a

Prob.(<V) y = −log(−log(P))
(m/s) = = n/135.228
1 24.5 0.077 -0.942
2 26.0 0.154 -0.627
3 28.0 0.231
Return R Prob -0.383 y U (m/s)
4 29.0 0.308 -0.164
2 0.5000 0.367 31.7
5 30.0 0.385 0.046
6 31.0 50.462 0.8000 1.500
0.257 37.6
7 32.5 10
0.538 0.9000
0.480
2.250 41.5
8 34.0 0.615 0.723
9 35.0 200.692 0.9500 2.970
1.000 45.3
10 37.0 500.769 0.9800 1.338
3.902 50.1
11 39.0 0.846 1.789
12 42.5 1000.923 0.9900 4.600
2.525 53.8
200 0.9950 5.296 57.4
500 0.9980 6.214 62.2
1000 0.9990 6.907 65.9
2000 0.9995 7.601 69.5
 Return period and Risk
Risk
= probability that there will be at least one occurrence of the design
loads (i.e., design extreme wind speed) during the whole life span of
the structure (L years)
= 1 − prob.(no occurrence of design wind speed (R-year return) in L years)
L Life Return period Risk
 1
Risk = 1 − 1 −  L (yr) R (yr)
 R 50 50 0.636
50 100 0.395
50 200 0.222
50 500 0.095
50 1000 0.049
50 2000 0.025
100 100 0.634
120 120 0.634
120 1000 0.113
120 2300 0.051
 Return period and Risk
For a normal structure of L = 50, the ULS risk is usually specified at 5%.
→ Should use design wind speed at R = 1000

However, many design codes still use R = 50 (APS)

→ The 50-year return wind loads shall then need to be multiplied by a
“load factor” to arrive at the 1000-year return wind loads
2
V ( R = 1000) 
→ The load factor is the ratio of  V ( R = 50) 
 
→ In regions with temperature climate such as UK and Europe, the
variation of wind speed with return period gives a load factor
typically of values ranging between 1.4 and 1.6. Hong Kong has
been adopting this and uses load factor = 1.4 or 1.5, but this is
questionable.