Field Measurements of Wind Pressure on an Open Roof during Typhoons HaiKui and SuLi

Full-scale measurements of wind action on the open roof structure of the WuXi grand theater, which is composed of eight large-span free-form leaf-shaped space trusses with the largest span of 76.79 m, were conducted during the passage of Typhoons HaiKui and SuLi. The wind pressure field data were continuously and simultaneously monitored using a wind pressure monitoring system installed on the roof structure during the typhoons. A detailed analysis of the field data was performed to investigate the characteristics of the fluctuating wind pressure on the open roof, such as the wind pressure spectrum, spatial correlation coefficients, peak wind pressures and non-Gaussian wind pressure characteristics, under typhoon conditions. Three classical methods were used to calculate the peak factors of the wind pressure on the open roof, and the suggested design method and peak factors were given. The non-Gaussianity of the wind pressure was discussed in terms of the third and fourth statistical moments of the measured wind pressure, and the corresponding indication of the non-Gaussianity on the open roof was proposed. The result shows that there were large pulses in the time-histories of the measured wind pressure on Roof A2 in the field. The spatial correlation of the wind pressures on roof A2 between the upper surface and lower surface is very weak.When the skewness is larger than 0.3 and the kurtosis is larger than 3.7, the wind pressure time series on roof A2 can be taken as a non-Gaussian distribution, and the other series can be taken as a Gaussian distribution.