Experimental Study on Sudden Opening-Induced Effect on Wind Load of Low-Rise Building

Wind-induced damage is one of the major safety problems for low-rise buildings. In this scenario, sudden opening or cladding damage is always a critical reason in the damage chain. Quantitative evaluation of the internal and external wind pressure in transient and steady state stages is essential for a comprehensive understanding of the sudden opening-induced effect on wind load. However, the characteristics can hardly be obtained due to stochastic and unsteady flow and wind load. In this study, the overshoot rate, which is used for evaluating the overshooting phenomenon, is redefined and investigated. A low-rise building model with an 80[Formula: see text]mm × 80[Formula: see text]mm square dominant opening is adopted in the experiment. Accordingly, the characteristics of the overshooting phenomenon are extracted in this study. Results show that the overshooting phenomenon is more severe for the cases where the opening is located on the windward side. With the gradual turning of the face from the normal-to-wind direction ([Formula: see text]), the overshoot rate increases accordingly, and reaches the maximum value at around [Formula: see text]. Meanwhile, the Helmholtz frequency is examined based on the steady state wind pressure, which confirms the values of parameters defined in the classic study. Furthermore, by investigating the change of fluctuating net wind load acting on different faces of a building, the opening-induced internal wind load basically has a beneficial effect on the corresponding face, as it reduces the fluctuation of wind load, and it has an adverse effect on all the other faces.