Characteristics of Wind Loads on Long-Span Roof

In recent years, many large span roofs of airport waiting room and garage were destructed in the tropic storm, which have the characteristics of light mass, high flexibility, slight damping and low natural frequency. Wind loads general control the design of such structures. Thus, the tests of wind pressure with the rigid scale model in boundary layer wind tunnel were conducted in the structural design stage. This paper presents the results of characteristics of wind loads on large-span roof structure of the Guangzhou International Convention & Exhibition Center (GICEC) in frequency domain. The power spectrum densities, correlation coefficients, coherence functions and probability density function (PDF) were analyzed in detail. The results can be summarized as follows: (1)The power spectrum densities of fluctuating wind loads have the characteristics of vortex shedding and the Strouhal number is about 0.295; (2)The coherence coefficients decrease with the frequency and the spatial distance increase at both the along-wind and across-wind direction; (3)There are clearly negative skewed distributions for some pressure taps at the windward leading roof edge and much longer negative tails are observed, which follow Non-Gaussian distributions. The results presented in this paper are expected to be of considerable interest and of use to researchers and professionals involved in designing complex long-span roof structures.