Site Characterization of the Texas Tech Wind Engineering Research Field Laboratory

Wind speed and direction data has been collected at the Texas Tech Wind Engineering Field Laboratory (WERFL) for over ten years. Meteorological instrumentation for the laboratory are mounted on a 48.5 m high tower at 6 height levels. The site is located NE of the Texas Tech University main campus in Lubbock, TX. Although the topography is extremely flat, the turbulence of the flow regime around the site varies with direction due to a wide range of ground obstructions in the vicinity. The gust factors (ratio of the peak wind gust to the mean wind speed measured over an interval of time) of wind records are useful in describing the turbulence due to ground roughness and can also be employed to calculate the upwind aerodynamic roughness length by means of a gust factor model developed by Jon Wieringa. This paper will present results of this analysis from over 4000 records collected from the WERFL over the last four years.