On antarctic wind engineering

• Main Author: Sanz Rodrigo, Javier
• Other Authors: Buchlin, Jean-Marie, Beeck, Jeroen van, Degrez, Gérard, De Myttenaere, Kristel, Pattyn, Frank, Van Lipzig, Nicole P. M., Parente, Alessandro
• Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
• Language: French
• Published: Universite Libre de Bruxelles 2011
• Subjects: Mécanique; Sciences de l'ingénieur; Winds > Antarctica; Buildings > Aerodynamics > Antarctica; Weather forecasting > Mathematical models > Antarctica; Vents > Antarctique; Constructions > Aérodynamique > Antarctique; Temps (Météorologie) > Prévision > Modèles mathématiques > Antarctique; snowdrift; wind engineering; wind tunnel modeling; mesoscale modeling; CFD modeling; reanalysis; Antarctica; boundary layer meteorology; building aerodynamics; numerical weather prediction; Antarctic; The Antarctic; Antarc*; Antarctique*; Ice Shelves
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2013/ULB-DIPOT:oai:dipot.ulb.ac.be:2013/209953; https://dipot.ulb.ac.be/dspace/bitstream/2013/209953/1/063a0a31-7ae4-421b-80cf-8aaaefb6640e.txt; https://dipot.ulb.ac.be/dspace/bitstream/2013/209953/4/6f68850e-c778-497b-a825-d9739d178a6a.txt

Antarctic Wind Engineering deals with the effects of wind on the built environment. The assessment of wind induced forces, wind resource and wind driven snowdrifts are the main tasks for a wind engineer when participating on the design of an Antarctic building. While conventional Wind Engineering techniques are generally applicable to the Antarctic environment, there are some aspects that require further analysis due to the special characteristics of the Antarctic wind climate and its boundary layer meteorology. The first issue in remote places like Antarctica is the lack of site wind measurements and meteorological information in general. In order to complement this shortage of information various meteorological databases have been surveyed. Global Reanalyses, produced by the European Met Office ECMWF, and RACMO/ANT mesoscale model simulations, produced by the Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research of Utrecht University (IMAU), have been validated versus independent observations from a network of 115 automatic weather stations. The resolution of these models, of some tens of kilometers, is sufficient to characterize the wind climate in areas of smooth topography like the interior plateaus or the coastal ice shelves. In contrast, in escarpment and coastal areas, where the terrain gets rugged and katabatic winds are further intensified in confluence zones, the models lack resolution and underestimate the wind velocity. The Antarctic atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) is characterized by the presence of strong katabatic winds that are generated by the presence of surface temperature inversions in sloping terrain. This inversion is persistent in Antarctica due to an almost continuous cooling by longwave radiation, especially during the winter night. As a result, the ABL is stably stratified most of the time and, only when the wind speed is high it becomes near neutrally stratified. This thesis also aims at making a critical review of the hypothesis underlying wind engineering models when extreme boundary layer ...