Achieving safer and more economical buildings through database-assisted, reliability-based design for wind
Following such landmark aerodynamic tests as Irminger’s in 1894, Flachsbart’s in1932—the first to be conducted in boundary-layer flow—and University of Western Ontario(UWO) 1970s tests, considerable progress has been achieved in low-rise building design forwind. Nevertheless, the present state of the art remains inadequate. UWO tests wereconducted at low angular and spatial resolutions. Their results were then used to createdrastically simplifying standard aerodynamic tables and plots designed for slide-rule eracalculations and entailing errors that can exceed 50%.We review material which shows that significant improvements in main wind-load resistingsystem and component design can be achieved by using database-assisted design (DAD) andassociated structural…