Wind-resistant Design Of Low-rise Light-weight Steel Structures

The researches in the field of wind engineering have begun since 1980s in China. The objects of researches were primarily focused on high-rise buildings, tower and mast structures, large-span spatial structures, and there were little work done in low-rise light-weight steel structures. However, the majority of damaged buildings destroyed by wind arc light-weight steel structures. So some work was done to develop the wind-resistant design of low-rise light-weight steel structures.First, the wind loading codes of China, Japan, Australia and America were briefly described in this paper, and some parameters in these wind loading codes concerned of wind-resistant design were compared, including the formula in wind-resistant design, basic wind velocity(wind pressure), shape factor, terrain/height coefficient, etc.Then, based on the existing data of wind tunnel tests on low-rise building from TOLYOPOLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY, several methods have been used to calculate the inner force of a low-rise portal frame model, including the methods recommend by the codes of China, Japan, Australia and America, etc. And a time history analysis on this low-rise portal frame model has been conduted to obtain the inner force distribution of an edged frame and a middle frame of the structure. All results of the inner forces calculated by the methods mentioned above have been compared to analysis the advantages and shortcomings of the wind codes of different countries and give some reasonable suggestions to wind-resistant design methods of Chinese code on low-rise light-weight steel structures.Finally, by the Universal effective static wind load (UESWL) method which based on the proper orthogonal decomposition technic, the maximum response of the low-rise portal frame model under wind load was estimated. Comparing with the results given by time history analysis, it is shown that the UESWL method can work out the maximum axial force well.