Abstract

Wind loading is important but difficult to evaluate in the design of rainscreen walls. Full-scale measurements concerning pressure equalization of rainscreen facades have been carried out at the Technical University of Eindhoven (TUE) in the Netherlands. The measurements of the exterior and the cavity pressures for limited leakage-area and venting-area configurations have been taken over a period of more than a year on a central panel of the main TUE building and the field data has been analyzed in both time and frequency domains. The present wind tunnel study attempts to simulate these full-scale measurements in order to establish the techniques and parameters required for a detailed investigation of the rainscreen wall behaviour under the influence of the wind. The study presents the results of the wind tunnel experiments, compares them with the full-scale data and discusses their similarity after introducing appropriate corrections. Both mean and fluctuating pressures are evaluated for central and edge rainscreen wall panels exposed to a variety of wind directions.