Comparison of Field and Full-Scale Laboratory Peak Pressures at the IBHS Research Center

The Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS) research facility is capable of subjecting full scale structures to high wind loads. In order to validate the facility, comparisons of the mean velocity, turbulence intensity profiles and turbulent spectra are made to both field measurements from Texas Tech University and theoretical profiles and spectral estimates. The match of the mean velocity profiles and turbulence intensity profiles was good in both the longitudinal and lateral directions. The match of the turbulent spectra from the IBHS facility is good, with a small spectra gap between wave numbers of 0.01 and 0.1 and too much energy at small scales, similar to model scale wind tunnels. The match of point pressures on a building compared to model scale and full scale experiments is good, with the results from the IBHS facility generally falling between the full scale and model scale results in the separated regions on the roof.