Research

General Areas of Research

The atmospheric boundary layer wind tunnel at UC Davis has many possible applications.  Some areas of research undertaken by the ABLWT in the past include:

Air Pollution/Air Toxins Studies

City Planning and Analysis

  • Locating stack positions
  • Exhaust re-entrainment
  • Determination of stack heights
  • Assessment of bio-hazard/radioactive exhausts

Accidental Gaseous Releases

  • Short term exposure estimates
  • Long term exposure estimates

Indoor Air Quality Evaluations

  • HVAC performance
  • Outdoor wind effects
  • Location of doors/windows

Particle Emission and Transport

  • Dust emission from tailings
  • Sand transport
  • Sand/dust storm simulations

Pedestrian Level Winds

City Planning and Analysis

  • Assessment of future development
  • Mitigation of existing problems

Wind Environment of High Rise Buildings

  • Pedestrian comfort analysis
  • Effectiveness of mitigation

Sports Stadium/Complex Evaluation

  • 3Com Stadium
  • Proposed San Francisco 49er’s complex
  • San Francisco Giant’s downtown PacBell Park

Site Specific Wind Environment Analysis

  • Small shopping mall wind environment
  • Mitigation of wind caused problems
  • Assessment of door locations

Wind Power

Sitting Wind Turbines for Wind Farms

  • Measurement of mean and turbulence quantities in site simulations
  • Estimates of annual energy output from integration of wind tunnel results with full scale meteorological data

Other Industrial and Commercial Applications

Analysis of Natural Ventilation

  • Buildings and building complexes
  • Parking garage structures
  • Cooling tower re-circulation
  • Odor analysis

Snow/Sand Loading and Cumulation

  • Minimizing snow/sand depositions
  • Roofing loading by snow/sand

Aerodynamics of Flexible Structures

Thin Membrane Roof / Canvas Covering

  • Pressure loading measurement
  • Rain penetration analysis

Solid Structures

  • High Rise buildings
  • Low Rise buildings

Wind Loads of Structures

High Rise Buildings

  • Cladding force loads
  • Window force loads

Low Rise Buildings

  • Pressure distributions

Flexible Structures

  • Suspension bridges
  • Long span bridges
  • Fabric roots

 

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