Improved Estimates of Wind Speed Estimates Over Short Time Periods

Engineers need to accurately estimate wind speeds so that an appropriate level of construction is used in structures. In order to make accurate predictions of wind loads a number of factors are considered. The first of these is estimation of the peak wind speed over a given recurrence interval. This is typically done with probabilistic estimate of recurrence wind speed. The design winds are also subject to adjustments due to difference in averaging time, exposure, and anemometer heights. In order to adjust for these factors, a number of simplifications are usually made.

Earlier work by Durst (1960) has typically been used to adjust for different averaging times. The original work was performed using several different data sets and heights, not all of which were collected at the same time. Several simplifications in the associated distribution of wind speeds were also made. While these simplifying assumptions were necessary at the time, more modern digital data archives allow for some improvements to be made over the original methodology. The WInd Science and Engineering (WISE) Center at Texas Tech University has been collecting numerous digital data set at high frequency over the past decade. These digital records are suitable for direct investigation of the variation of wind speed with averaging time, rather than being based on simplifying assumptions.