Wind force coefficients for the design of a mono-sloped free roof considering the deformation by wind load

The purpose of the present study is to predict variations of the wind force coefficients for a mono- sloped roof with consideration of the roof deformation. The authors are accumulating data of the wind force coefficients for membrane free roofs such as gable, troughed, mono-sloped and HP roofs by carrying out wind tunnel experiments (see References 1 and 2). Furthermore, we are trying to construct a CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) model for estimating the wind force coefficients on membrane free roofs (see References 3 and 4). Based on these investigations, we have proposed the design wind force coefficients expressed as equivalent static loads, assuming that the roofs are rigid; in practice, we used rigid models in the wind tunnel experiments. For discussing the wind force coefficients, the influence of deformations of the membrane roofs due to the wind loading was not considered. However, because the membrane roofs are very sensitive to wind actions, the deformation may be large. In the present paper, we carry out CFD and structural analysis to investigate the effect of the deformation on the wind forces coefficients as well as on the load effects. Based on the results, we propose a solution that considers such an effect in the specification of wind force coefficients. Finally, perspectives of future studied are presented.