Weathering sandstorms in engineering design
Weathering sandstorms in engineering design lead image
With human and technological expansion into desert areas, sandstorms have become an engineering challenge that can be overlooked by designers unfamiliar with arid or semi-arid regions. Global warming further exacerbates the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, making disaster resistance a necessary consideration in building design, which must account for the complexity of wind-sand environments.
Current research on wind-sand effects primarily treats both airflow and sand particles as continuous phases. The Eulerian-Lagrangian (E-L) method provides a more accurate representation of wind-sand environments, but the coupling between wind field and particle motion remains elusive in past works.
Employing the E-L method, Hu et al. filled this research gap to reveal the impact of wind-sand interactions on low-rise building surfaces. Their numerical model accounts for wind speed, particle size, and sand concentration in synthetic turbulence scenarios. As a result, they proposed the shape amplification coefficient, which can be used in engineering mathematics to characterize the relationship between particle concentration and particle impact, enabling precise quantification of wind-sand load effects in building design.
“This comprehensive analysis of particle motion mechanisms provides a mechanistic explanation for the collision distribution patterns on building surfaces, offering insights for formulating protective strategies for low-rise buildings in regions prone to wind-sand activity,” said author Qiang Jin.
In their next phase of research, the authors plan on prioritizing field measurements in wind-sand environments, aiming to understand shape coefficient changes specific to different contexts.
“Our objectives include accumulating data on flow field characteristics and particle distribution under extreme wind-sand conditions, providing data support for wind tunnel experiments and numerical simulations under extreme dust environments, and further promoting the integration of wind-sand load considerations into engineering design standards,” said Jin.
Source: “Aeolian sand load effects and distribution patterns of particle collisions on low-rise buildings under severe wind-sand conditions,” by Di Hu, Teng Zhang, Qiang Jin, Hongyuan Jia, Ka-Veng Yuen, and Kan He, Physics of Fluids (2025). The article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0281161 .
