• Wind and Structures
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.131-145
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• 2012

Severe wind is one of the major natural hazards in Australia. The component contributors to economic loss in Australia with regards to severe wind are tropical cyclones, thunderstorms and subtropical (synoptic) storms. Geoscience Australia's Risk and Impact Analysis Group (RIAG) is developing mathematical models to study a number of natural hazards including wind hazard. This paper discusses wind hazard under current and future climate conditions using RIAG's synoptic wind hazard model. This model can be used in non-cyclonic regions of Australia (Region A in the Australian-New Zealand Wind Loading Standard; AS/NZS 1170.2:2011) where the wind hazard is dominated by synoptic and thunderstorm gust winds.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.321-334
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• 2020

Engineering type tropical cyclone (TC) wind field models are used to estimate TC wind hazard. Some of the models are well-calibrated using observation data, while others are not extensively compared and verified. They are all proxies to the real TC wind fields. The computational effort for their use differs. In the present study, a comparison of the predicted wind fields is presented by considering three commonly used models: the gradient wind field model, slab-resolving model, and a linear height-resolving model. These models essentially predict the horizontal wind speed at a different height. The gradient wind field model and linear height-resolving model are simple to use while the nonlinear slab-resolving model is more compute-intensive. A set of factors is estimated and recommended such that the estimated TC wind hazard by using these models becomes more consistent. The use of the models, including the developed set of factors, for estimating TC wind hazard over-water and over-land is presented by considering the historical tracks for a few sites. It is shown that the annual maximum TC wind speed can be adequately modelled by the generalized extreme value distribution.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.2
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• pp.607-617
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• 2019

Global warming and climate change are increasing the intensity of typhoons and hurricanes and thus increasing the risk effects of typhoon and hurricane hazards on nuclear power plants (NPPs). To reflect these changes, a new NPP should be designed to endure design-basis hurricane wind speeds corresponding to an exceedance frequency of $10^{-7}/yr$. However, the short typhoon and hurricane observation records and uncertainties included in the inputs for an estimation cause significant uncertainty in the estimated wind speeds for return periods of longer than 100,000 years. A logic-tree framework is introduced to handle the epistemic uncertainty when estimating wind speeds. Three key parameters of a typhoon wind field model, i.e., the central pressure difference, pressure profile parameter, and radius to maximum wind, are used for constructing logic tree branches. The wind speeds of the simulated typhoons and the probable maximum wind speeds are estimated using Monte Carlo simulations, and wind hazard curves are derived as a function of the annual exceedance probability or return period. A logic tree decreases the epistemic uncertainty included in the wind intensity models and provides reasonably acceptable wind speeds.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.287-296
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• 2022

Analyzing the typhoon wind hazards is crucial to determine the extreme wind load on engineering structures in the typhoon prone region. In essence, the typhoon hazard analysis is a high-dimensional problem with randomness arising from the typhoon genesis, environmental variables and the boundary layer wind field. This study suggests a dimension reduction approach by decoupling the original typhoon hazard analysis into two stages. At the first stage, the randomness of the typhoon genesis and environmental variables are propagated through the typhoon track model and intensity model into the randomness of the key typhoon parameters. At the second stage, the probability distribution information of the key typhoon parameters, combined with the randomness of the boundary layer wind field, could be used to estimate the extreme wind hazard. The Chinese southeast coastline is taken as an example to demonstrate the adequacy and efficiency of the suggested decoupling approach.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Hazard Mitigation
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.1-8
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• 2011

In this study, a wind hazard map over Korea peninsula based on geographical information is developed, which consists of the surface roughness model, the topographical effect model and the homogeneous wind model. The surface roughness model is assessed to evaluate the effect of the surface roughness on the wind field near ground. The topographical effect model is assessed to quantify the effect of the speed-up caused by topology, which is calculated by adopting the topographical effect factor in Korea building code (2005). The homogeneous wind map is created either by a frequency analysis method for meteorological data or a typhoon simulation. The results show that the wind hazard map can be applied to the determination of insurance premium as well as the assessment of loss and damage.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.38 no.5
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• pp.355-366
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• 2024

Severe natural multi-hazard events can cause damage to infrastructure and economic losses of billions of dollars. The challenges of modeling these losses include dependency between hazards, cause and sequence of loss, and lack of available data. This paper presents and explores multi-hazard loss modeling in the context of the combined wind and rain vulnerability of mid/high-rise buildings during hurricane events. A component-based probabilistic vulnerability model provides the framework to test and contrast two different approaches to treat the multi-hazards: In one, the wind and rain hazard models are both decoupled from the vulnerability model. In the other, only the wind hazard is decoupled, while the rain hazard model is embedded into the vulnerability model. The paper presents the mathematical and conceptual development of each approach, example outputs from each for the same scenario, and a discussion of weaknesses and strengths of each approach.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.467-480
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• 2014

The estimation of wind speed values used in codes and standards is an integral part of the wind load evaluation process. In a number of codes and standards, wind speeds outside of tropical cyclone prone regions are estimated using a single probability distribution developed from observed wind speed data, with no distinction made between the types of causal wind hazard (e.g., thunderstorm). Non-tropical cyclone wind hazards (i.e., thunderstorm, non-thunderstorm) have been shown to possess different probability distributions and estimation of non-tropical cyclone wind speeds based on a single probability distribution has been shown to underestimate wind speeds. Current treatment of non-tropical cyclone wind hazards in worldwide codes and standards is touched upon in this work. Meteorological data is available at a considerable number of United States (U.S.) stations that have information on wind speed as well as the type of causal wind hazard. In this paper, probability distributions are fit to distinct storm types (i.e., thunderstorm and non-thunderstorm) and the results of these distributions are compared to fitting a single probability distribution to all data regardless of storm type (i.e., co-mingled). Distributions fitted to data separated by storm type and co-mingled data will also be compared to a derived (i.e., "mixed") probability distribution considering multiple storm types independently. This paper will analyze two extreme value distributions (e.g., Gumbel, generalized Pareto). It is shown that mixed probability distribution, on average, is a more conservative measure for extreme wind speed estimation. Using a mixed distribution is especially conservative in situations where a given wind speed value for either storm type has a similar probability of occurrence, and/or when a less frequent storm type produces the highest overall wind speeds. U.S. areas prone to multiple non-tropical cyclone wind hazards are identified.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.75-90
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• 2016

A probabilistic approach that combines structural demand hazard analysis with cumulative damage assessment is presented and applied to a steel tower of a wind turbine. The study presents the step by step procedure to compare the reliability over time of the structure subjected to fatigue, assuming: a) a binomial Weibull annual wind speed, and b) a traditional Weibull probability distribution function (PDF). The probabilistic analysis involves the calculation of force time simulated histories, fatigue analysis at the steel tower base, wind hazard curves and structural fragility curves. Differences in the structural reliability over time depending on the wind speed PDF assumed are found, and recommendations about selecting a real PDF are given.

• Journal of Korean Association for Spatial Structures
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.97-104
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• 2018

A connected control method for the adjacent buildings has been studied to reduce dynamic responses. In these studies, seismic loads were generally used as an excitation. Recently, multi-hazards loads including earthquake and strong wind loads are employed to investigate control performance of various control systems. Accordingly, strong wind load as well as earthquake load was adopted to evaluate control performance of adaptive smart coupling control system against multi-hazard. To this end, an artificial seismic load in the region of strong seismicity and an artificial wind load in the region of strong winds were generated for control performance evaluation of the coupling control system. Artificial seismic and wind excitations were made by SIMQKE and Kaimal spectrum based on ASCE 7-10. As example buildings, two 20-story and 12-story adjacent buildings were used. An MR (magnetorheological) damper was used as an adaptive smart control device to connect adjacent two buildings. In oder to present nonlinear dynamic behavior of MR damper, Bouc-Wen model was employed in this study. After parametric studies on MR damper capacity, optimal command voltages for MR damper on each seismic and wind loads were investigated. Based on numerical analyses, it was shown that the adaptive smart coupling control system proposed in this study can provide very good control performance for Multi-hazards.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.47 no.1
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• pp.59-65
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• 2015

Background: After the Fukushima accident, the importance of hazard analysis for extreme external events was raised. Methods: To analyze typhoon-induced hazards, which are one of the significant disasters of East Asian countries, a statistical analysis using the extreme value theory, which is a method for estimating the annual exceedance frequency of a rare event, was conducted for an estimation of the occurrence intervals or hazard levels. For the four meteorological variables, maximum wind speed, instantaneous wind speed, hourly precipitation, and daily precipitation, the parameters of the predictive extreme value theory models were estimated. Results: The 100-year return levels for each variable were predicted using the developed models and compared with previously reported values. It was also found that there exist significant long-term climate changes of wind speed and precipitation. Conclusion: A fragility analysis should be conducted to ensure the safety levels of a nuclear power plant for high levels of wind speed and precipitation, which exceed the results of a previous analysis.