Numerical investigation on the effect of gap height and wind direction on the distribution of pressure coefficient surrounding an isolated rural house
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Date
2019-07-01
Authors
Wan Nurfariza Wan Yahya
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Abstract
To date, the number of damaged houses due to windstorm has increased in Malaysia. The northern region of Peninsular Malaysia was reported to be susceptible to windstorm due to the presence of large open terrain condition. The disasters that occur mostly affected the roof of the house, especially to a rural house due to their non-engineering design. This study aims to determine the distribution of pressure coefficient and the associated wind flow pattern surrounding a rural house model. The low-rise gable roof house was modelled with three different gap heights and two locations of kitchen house subjected to five different wind directions. Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) simulation was used with the RNG k-ε type of turbulence model to simulate the wind flow. The results showed that the increase in gap height dimension did not affect the trend and magnitude of the Cp distribution except for the gap height region. However, the trend and magnitude of the Cp distribution were significantly affected by the change in the approaching wind direction. In this case, the maximum -Cp increased in the range of 0.07 to 0.85. Therefore, any studies on the vulnerability of rural house must include the oblique wind directions. In addition, the results also revealed that roof overhang increased the vulnerability of rural houses to windstorm by increasing the suction effect. As such, the presence of this component can be one of the factors that initiate the damage to the roof of a rural house especially when subjected to oblique wind direction.