Reliability of low-rise buildings: experimental wind load modeling vs. building codes

Different wind load models are used to estimate the structural response of low-rise buildings. The reference model is calibrated on a set of data recorded at the University of Western Ontario (UWO) wind tunnel facility. First, the wind pressure statistics are estimated and second, the pressure coefficients are evaluated. The other models are based on three different building codes: ASCE-7 98 (USA), EUROCODE 1 (Europe), DM 96 (Italy). All these four models are used to load a common low-rise building and the structural response in each case is calculated to outline the most significant differences. The obtained results compel the research on database-assisted design, which seems to provide more reliable structures.