Description:

All over Auckland, townhouses are appearing, fitting two, three, four or more houses where previously there was one. While many share walls with their neighbours, often they are designed as stand-alone dwellings, to give occupants a greater feeling of separation. However, while there has been some work on the external loads created by clusters of high-rise buildings, there is little on low-rise building clusters, and less still on their internal pressures. The difference in the external and internal pressures is important for ventilation, and is a major driver for damage during severe weather events.

Taking a generic set of buildings to represent a development, you will examine how building spacing and wind angles change the aerodynamic loads on the inside and outside of each building in the group. The wind conditions will represent an Auckland suburb, with testing undertaken in the Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel via surface pressure and velocity measurements.

As an Experimental Aerodynamics Project, students should preferably have an enthusiasm for aerodynamics, and like getting hands-on with hardware.

Type:

Undergraduate

Outcome:

By the end of this project, you will be able to:

• Create a suitable wind environment in the wind tunnel.
• Perform wind tunnel testing on a pressure-tapped model.
• Assess the aerodynamic loads, and how they relate to the incident wind conditions.
• Comment on the effect of building separation in an urban development.

Prerequisites

MECHENG712

Specialisations

• Mechanical Engineering
• Mechatronics Engineering

Categories

• Aero-Fluid-Hydrodynamics

Supervisor

• Nicholas Kay

Team

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Lab

Aerodynamics Lab (Newmarket 901 Lvl5, Lab)