A comparison of different methods to evaluate the wind induced forces on a high sided lorry

A numerical–experimental methodology for simulating the aerodynamic forces acting on a moving vehicle passing through the wake of a bridge tower under cross wind

“…4(b)), differences become larger, but however lower than 20%. As expected (Cheli et al, 2006;Sterling et al, 2010;Cheli et al, 2011a), the lateral force coefficient linearly increases passing from 01 to 451, then it remains almost constant (transition from slender body to bluff body behavior) and finally drops down to zero passing from 1351 to 1801. The yaw moment coefficient is instead almost symmetric with respect to a¼901 presenting its maximum amplitude in correspondence of 451 (Cheli et al, 2011a;Cheli et al, 2011b).…”

“…Experimental tests have been carried out, at the Politecnico di Milano wind tunnel (and are widely described in Argentini et al (2011)) on scaled models, representing an articulated truck as representative of a high-sided vehicle sensitive to cross wind (Baker, 1998;Rocchi et al, 2010;Sterling et al, 2010;Cheli et al, 2011a;Cheli et al, 2011b). Two scaled models of the vehicle have been reproduced in 1:40 scale and their main dimensions are reported in full scale in Fig.…”

Wind tunnel measurements of crosswind loads on high sided vehicles over long span bridges

“…It is noted that previous works (Bocciolone et al, 2008;Sterling et al, 2010) using the same WT had adopted a larger scale. However, in order to ensure consistency with bridge aerodynamic experiments that were being undertaken as part of a larger project (and not reported here in order to maintain commercial confidence), the scale of 1:40 was adopted.…”

“…To apply such an approach, all the information relating to the interaction between the fluctuating nature of the wind field and the resulting complex flow field around the vehicle is expressed in terms of a series of nondimensional parameters, i.e., the aerodynamic force/moment coefficients. Their magnitudes depend on the geometrical features of the vehicle, on the characteristics of the impinging wind and also on the local topography; such coefficients are usually obtained empirically from wind tunnel (WT) simulations, numerical simulations (CFD), full-scale (FS) experiments or a combination of all three (Sterling et al, 2010).…”

“…There is a wealth of data pertaining to the wind load coefficients for vehicles on standard 'open ground' scenarios (Baker, 1991a;Sterling et al, 2010). However, the corresponding data for bridge/ viaduct decks is sparse and as such recourse are often made to the work undertaken by Coleman and Baker (1994).…”