Design and Fabrication of a New Open Jet Electric-Fan Wall of Wind Facility for Coastal Research

This paper presents the design process of a new full-scale Wall of Wind (WoW) facility for wind engineering testing. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) was used for a preliminary design of the facility, followed by an experimental verification of the wind field conducted with a small-scale replica. Results showed good agreement between mean wind speed profiles predicted by the CFD modeling and those measured experimentally, attesting to the growing importance of CFD simulations for wind engineering applications. The proposed full-scale 12-fan WoW facility will be able to engulf large- and full-scale models for future testing. The facility has been designed to generate wind and wind-driven rain with proper characteristics to mimic hurricanes up to Category 4 as defined by the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale. The intent of the new facility is to improve wind-related building code provisions, to develop innovative hurricane mitigation techniques, and to help strengthen the resiliency of coastal communities to hurricane hazards.