Numerical Investigation of the Interaction of Turbulent Wind Flow and Elastic Structures

Abstract

The Interaction between wind flow and structures plays an important role in the computation of civil engineering application. In case of gravity prestressed membrane roofs, the wind lifting forces may exceed the dead load leading to high amplitude structural oscillations, which interact with the flow field. To investigate the interaction a consistent discretization method based on stabilized space-time finite elements is applied. The flow field is modeled with the incompressible Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations with an anisotropic eddy-viscosity turbulence model. The structural motion is described with the theory for geometrically nonlinear elastic deformation behavior, a strong coupling algorithm for the time-dependent fluid-structure interaction is implemented. Two applications show the capability of the turbulence model in representing the anisotropic turbulence structure, the differences in the flow field over a bluff body between two configurations representing a rigid and an elastic membrane roof, discusses the structural responses of the roof at a high Reynolds number. (© 2004 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)