Wind Loading Risks from Multivortex Tornadoes
Publication: Journal of Structural Engineering
Volume 109, Issue 8
Abstract
Multivortex (MV) windfields have recently been established as frequent characteristics of intense tornadoes, introducing new issues in tornado risk analysis and loading characterization. A potentially important issue in the quantification of MV loading characteristics regards the probability that a structure will be hit by one of these high velocity secondary vortices. Using a simple model of multivortex flows, analytic relationships have been derived to facilitate the calculation of multivortex tornado loading hit probabilities for structures and facilities. A numerical integration method as well as an approximate solution have been developed to compute the cycloidal areas traversed by secondary vortices. Example calculations using current estimates of MV parameters suggest the conditional strike probabilities for point targets within the intense windfield core region are about 0.4 for a continuous single secondary vortex. To estimate the total MV wind loading risks, these conditional probabilities are combined with estimates of multivortex frequency and tornadoe strike probability.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Structural Engineering
Volume 109 • Issue 8 • August 1983
Pages: 2016 - 2022
Copyright
Copyright © 1983 ASCE.
History
Published online: Aug 1, 1983
Published in print: Aug 1983
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