Computer Simulation of Stochastic Wind Velocity Fields for Structural Response Analysis Comparisons and Applications.pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Advances in Civil Engineering Volume 2010, Article ID 749578, 20 pages doi:10.1155/2010/749578 Research Article Computer Simulation of Stochastic Wind Velocity Fields for Structural Response Analysis: Comparisons and Applications Filippo Ubertini1 and Fabio Giuliano2 1 Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Perugia, Via G. Duranti 93, 06125 Perugia, Italy 2 Department of Structural and Geotechnical Engineering, University of Rome “La Sapienza”, Via Eudossiana 18, 00184 Rome, Italy Correspondence should be addressed to Filippo Ubertini, filippo.ubertini@strutture.unipg.it Received 14 October 2009; Revised 1 April 2010; Accepted 13 April 2010 Academic Editor: Chungxiang Li Copyright © 2010 F. Ubertini and F. Giuliano. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The digital simulation of wind velocity fields, modeled as multivariate stationary Gaussian processes, is a widely adopted tool to generate the external input for response analysis of wind-sensitive nonlinear structures. The problem does not entail any theoretical difficulty, existing already a large number of well-established techniques, such as the accurate weighted amplitude wave superposition (WAWS) method. However, reducing the computational effort required by the WAWS method is sometimes necessary, especially when dealing with complex structures and high-dimensional simulation domains. In these cases, approximate formulas must be adopted, which however require an appropriate tuning of some fundamental parameters in such a way to achieve an acceptable level of