Façade Cladding Pressure Studies
Windtech has the world’s leading pressure measurement system for wind tunnel studies of the design pressures on tall building facades. This system is build in-house and has been developed over decades with the result being and exceptional level of signal to noise ratio with the ability to sample over 1100 pressure taps simultaneously at a high sampling rate with minimal phase lag across all channels.
All pressure signals initially low pass filtered using analogue filters – this is important in making sure that the signal is protected from extraneous interference spikes from electromagnetic or other sources. An inverse function of the pneumatic admittance is applied to the filtered signal to correct for the effect of any bias from the pressure tubes.
Windtech’s unique ability to accurately match full-scale measurements in the wind tunnel was acknowledged in 1995, when Tony Rofail was invited to present a plenary to the International Wind Engineering Conference to present his findings.
Contours of Maximum Net pressures
Contours of Minimum Net pressures
Performance of Facade Elements
Windtech Consultants performs various full-scale wind tunnel tests to determine the performance of facade elements such as louvre panels, external blinds and fins.
Tests that are performed include the following:
- Wind-noise generation
- Rain-noise generation
- Discharge coefficient and effective area
- Performance under serviceablity wind loads
- Helmholtz effects
