Area-averaged and internal pressure coefficients measured in the field

Area-averaged pressure coefficients for a purlin and internal pressure coefficients for a building with no interior partitions are investigated using full scale data collected at the Texas Tech University Wind Engineering Research Field Laboratory (WERFL). Two methods are used to quantify the area-averaged pressure coefficients for the purlin. The first procedure is numerical averaging of pressure coefficients collected in the purlin effective area. The second procedure uses measured wind-induced purlin displacements in conjunction with a uniform pressure-purlin displacement curve to obtain area-averaged pressure coefficients. Internal pressure coefficients are investigated using data collected in the interior of the building. Results are presented for both area-averaged pressure coefficients and interior pressure coefficients before and after application of a 2 s moving average filter. Both the unfiltered and the filtered results are compared to the values given in ANSI/ASCE7-88.