The 15th International Conference on Wind EngineeringBeijing, China; September 1-6, 2019

Wind tunnel testing on the new control tower of the Fujairah International Airport

Sebastián Franchini a, Javier Pérez Álvarez a, Mikel Ogueta-Gutiérrez a, Omar Gómez-Ortega a, Fernando Meseguer Garrido a

aInstituto Universitario de Microgravedad “Ignacio Da Riva”, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Plaza Cardenal Cisneros 3, 28040 Madrid, Spain

ABSTRACT: The design of the new control tower of Fujairah International Airport is character-ized by the geometry of the tower, inspired by the profile of a falcon and the curved surfaces of the roof of the auxiliary building. It is not possible to assimilate this peculiar geometry to the prototypical ones found in the application codes for wind action determination. In this article the process to carry out a wind tunnel testing campaign on a scale model of this building. The testing model has been constructed combining different techniques of carpentry, modelling, CNC milling and stereo-lithography (3D printing) and it was instrumented with 588 pressure taps. The effect on the aerodynamic loads of the buildings located around the tower has been studied. The results show that the distribution of pressures on the control tower and the auxiliary building are significantly modified depending on the configuration of the surrounding buildings.

KEYWORDS: Wind tunnel testing, Atmospheric boundary layer simulation, Fujairah Interna-tional Airport.

1 INTRODUCTIONA new Air Traffic Control Tower will be constructed as a part of the expansion plan of the airport Fujairah International Airport, United Arab Emirates. The set consists of the tower itself with a height of approximately 50 m and an auxiliary building with a plant of approximately 50×50 m and a maximum height of 17 m. They are characterized by the geometry of the tower inspired in a falcon and the curved roof of the auxiliary building. Figure 1 presents different views of the control tower and the auxiliary building.

Figure 1. Air Traffic Control Tower of the airport Fujairah International Airport. Front, side and isometric view.

It is impossible to directly assimilate this geometry into to the prototypical geometries found in the application codes for wind action determination. So, it is necessary to perform a wind tunnel test or CFD analyses.

This paper describes the work carried out to develop a wind tunnel test campaign on a scale model of the new control tower. The objective of these tests is to determine the aerodynamic loads that the atmospheric wind generates on this building. These works were developed at the Instituto Uni-versitario de Microgravedad “Ignacio da Riva” of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (IDR-UPM) at the request of PROINTEC SA.

2 WIND TUNNEL TESTING MODEL

To estimate the aerodynamic loads on the control tower, a scale model of this building was con-structed at 1:75 scale. The entire model was built in the modeling workshops of the IDR/UPM combining different techniques of carpentry, modeling, CNC milling and stereo-lithography (3D printing). The model of the control tower was instrumented with 588 pressure taps.The areas of the roof of the building that are in cantilever were instrumented with pressure taps in both sides (upper and lower faces) in order to determine the net pressure that acts on those zones.Some photographs of a test model instrumented with pressure taps are presented in Figure 2. Figure 3 shows schematic views of the pressure taps distribution.

Figure 2. Instrumented model of the Control Tower and it auxiliary building.

Figure 3. Pressure taps distribution.

In addition to the model of the control tower, models of three surrounding buildings have been constructed (B1, B2 and the Hangar, see Figure 5).

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The 15th International Conference on Wind EngineeringBeijing, China; September 1-6, 2019

3 EXPERIMENTAL SETUP

Once the model was completed, it was installed in the ACLA-16 wind tunnel test chamber. Some photographs of the model installed in the test chamber can be seen in Figure 4.

Roughness elements were placed in the test section of the wind tunnel ACLA-16, so that the boundary layer just upstream the model is like an atmospheric boundary layer of type C (defined by ASCE 7-10 [1, 2]).

The plastic tubes from the pressure taps are connected to the pressure measuring system, which is composed of several blocks of pressure transducers of Scanivalve Corp., model ZOC 33/64PxX2. The instrumentation is completed with a Pitot tube (manufacturer: Airflow, model 3.3.311) and two computers with their corresponding digital data acquisition systems and instrument control software.

Figure 4. Model of the Air Traffic Control Tower installed in the ACLA16 wind tunnel.

Two configurations have been tested: one with the four buildings (control tower, B1, B2 and hangar) and another without the hangar (see Figure 5). The test consists of setting the angle of incidence of the wind, , at which it is desired to measure and turn on the wind tunnel fans. After reaching the stationary operating regime, the measurement process begins, recording the value of pressures induced by the wind on each model pressure tap. This procedure is repeated for angles ranging from = 0º; to = 350º; each 10º.

All measurements were performed at a sampling frequency of 100 Hz during 90 s; that is, 9000 samples per pressure tap and test.

Figure 5. Layout of the four buildings of the set.

U

B1

B2 Hangar

4 RESULTS

The primary outcome of each test is the time series of the pressure measured in each of the 588 pressure taps for each of the 36 wind directions and configuration tested. From these time series, the pressure coefficient is calculated as [3]:

ii

p

p t pc t

q, (1)

Where pi is the pressure measured at the pressure tap i (with i = 1, ..., 588), p and q are the reference static pressure and the reference dynamic pressure. The statistical parameters (average, standard deviation, maxima and minima, etc.) were determined from the time series of the pressure coefficients.

Figure 6 shows the mean pressure coefficient measured in the pressure taps of the auxiliary building roof, contained in the y-z plane and for two wind incidence angles, = 0º and = -90º.The error bars represent the standard deviation of the pressure coefficient.

Figure 6. Mean pressure coefficient measured in the pressure taps of the auxiliary building roof, contained in the y-z plane and for two wind incidence angles, = 0º (left) and = -90º (right).

When the wind comes from = -90º the hangar is located upstream of the control tower. In the graph on the left it can see the effect of the hangar's wake on the roof of the building.

5 REFERENCES

1 Minimum design loads for buildings and other structures ASCE/SEI 7–10. American Society of Civil Engineers, Washington (DC), 2010.

2 Wind Tunnel Studies of Buildings and Structures ASCE/SEI 49–12. American Society of Civil Engineers, Wash-ington (DC), 2012.

3 J. Meseguer, Á. Sanz, S. Pindado, S. Franchini, G. Alonso. Aerodinámica Civil. Efecto del viento en edificaciones y estructuras. 2a Edición. Garceta Grupo Editorial, 2013.

-30 -20 -10 0 10 20 30

x [m]

-4

-3

-2

-1

0

Without hangar

With hangar

-30 -20 -10 0 10 20 30

x [m]

-4

-3

-2

-1

0

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