NUMERICAL WIND TUNNEL TECHNIQUE FOR COUPLING ALGORITHM OF WIND AND MEMBRANE STRUCTURE INTERACTION

With light mass, small stiffness and low natural frequency, membrane structures are sensitive to wind. Therefore, the coupling action must be considered in the analysis of wind-induced response of the membrane structures. Based on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), the numerical wind tunnel technique is studied, which is effectively applied to the investigation of the wind pressure distribution of membrane structures. Two methodologies for solving this problem were introduced: strong coupling and weak coupling. For the weak coupling method, which is more absorbing, the computational fluid dynamics codes and computational structural dynamics codes were integrated into one program. In the process of dealing with arbitrarily complex fluid and structure interaction (FSI), there will be a number of coupling algorithm problems, such as the transfer of information between the coupled programs. As shown, numerical wind tunnel technique for coupling algorithm can be interpreted as an effective solution to the fully-coupled, complex problem that results from the discretization of the complete problem. Results from coupling problems on the membrane structures and wind load interaction indicate that the proposed approach offers a convenient and cost-effective method to solve the FSI problems by numerical wind tunnel technique for coupling algorithm.