Flight of Urban Windborne Debris

Windborne debris (roof tiles, branches) accounts for anywhere between 10 and 30% of the damage during windstorms. A previous EPSRC project funded a PhD student to look at the free flight of single items of debris https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jweia.2012.07.011. This project aims to extend that by looking at the flight of multiple items, moving in and around the urban environment, playing their part in the debris damage chain. A combination of wind tunnel and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modelling will be utilised. In the former, multiple roof tiles will be released from a target building using a suction-based trigger and tracked using high speed cameras through an urban environment. CFD simulations will be run of the same scenario, employing "smart" particle tracking for the debris and overset meshes for the launch and impact phases. The instantaneous force and moment coefficients will be derived from the previous work. Earlier projects have developed a risk model for slender structures in wind (Royal Society IC170137) and extended it to vernacular housing (GCRF). The proposed project will use predicted distributions of debris impact position and impact energy to extend this risk model to account for wind borne debris.