Europe
Wind Tunnel Testing At OXY, Brussels
The OXY project is a total refurbishment of a landmark building in the centre of Brussels, which incorporates apartments, offices and a luxury hotel. Windtech were enlisted to undertake a sequence of Wind Microclimate assessments. This vibrant development’s striking form and façade design meant that wind tunnel testing was essential to ensure cladding pressures and loads were accurately measured and to enable the optimisation of façade specification on various elements such as fins, balustrades and also PV panels.
The wind tunnel testing aimed to determine the design case net pressures on the façade cladding as well as the above mentioned facade elements. Windtech constructed a scale model that included a total of 525 pressure sensors on the façade, measuring net pressures for various elements like awnings and parapets in real-time. Through this wind tunnel testing, we can identify the exact extent of the peak pressures localised “hot spots.” Through the incorporation of Windtech’s advanced climate directionality analysis technique, we are able to further optimise the façade pressures, allowing for further cost optimisation of the façade package.
An additional wind study using the ‘Area Averaging Method’ was also used to measure the pressures across panel areas across the building envelope. This method provided accurate design load cases for input into the structural engineer’s FEA model, resulting in thinner structural members, optimised load cases, and potential material savings.
