| The New Paradigm of Thunderstorm Downbursts for Safe and Sustainable Development Giovanni Solari1; 1UNIVERSITY OF GENOA, Genova, Italy; PAPER: 64/Geomechanics/Keynote (Oral) SCHEDULED: 14:00/Sat. 26 Oct. 2019/Athena (105/Mezz. F) ABSTRACT: The wind climate of Europe and of many other countries in the world is dominated by synoptic extra-tropical cyclones and by mesoscale thunderstorm downbursts. Thunderstorms are frequent phenomena that cause wind speeds and wind-induced damage often greater than those due to synoptic cyclones. This new paradigm of wind engineering has given rise to a recent burst of research despite which there is not yet a model of thunderstorms and their loading of structures like that developed for cyclones in the early 1960s which is still in use in engineering practice (1). This shortcoming leads to unsafe and expensive structures. The insufficient safety of low- and medium-rise structures is testified by frequent damage and collapse in thunderstorm days. The excessive cost of tall buildings is apparent due to the absence of critical situations due to the wind. Both these aspects are derived from the fact that thunderstorm outflows intensify close to the terrain and reduce their speed while increasing the height, whereas traditional wind speeds and loading increases with height. THUNDERR (www.thunderr.eu) is a project funded by the European Research Council aiming to pursue three objectives: 1) to formulate a novel, interdisciplinary and unitary model of thunderstorm outflows (2, 3); 2) to assess a wind loading model of structures due to thunderstorm outflows (4, 5) and to encapsulate this and the classical method for cyclones into a novel wind loading format easily transferable to engineering and codification; 3) to spread the results throughout the international community, to strengthen a renewed culture on wind actions on structures. This paper provides the general framework of the THUNDERR project, illustrates the results obtained in this phase of the research, describes the perspectives of the studies currently undertaken under the scientific and technical viewpoints, and discusses their potential impact on civil and structural engineering, as well as their consequences on building safety and sustainability References: (1) A.G. Davenport, Proc. Inst. Civ. Eng. 19 (1961) 449-472. (2) P. De Gaetano, M.P. Repetto, T. Repetto, G. Solari, J. Wind Eng. Ind. Aerod. 126 (2014) 132-143. (3) M. Burlando, D. Romanic, G. Solari, H. Hangan, S. Zhang, Mon. Weather Rev. 145 (2017) 3507-3527. (4) G. Solari, Eng. Struct. 108 (2016) 28-46. (5) G. Solari, P. De Gaetano, Eng. Struct. 176 (2018) 188-207. |
