A state-of-the-art report on computational wind engineering

Computational Wind Engineering (CWE) is a new branch of Wind Engineering addressing the applications of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to all classical wind engineering and building aerodynamics problems such as the evaluation of wind-induced pressures on buildings and other structures, the assessment of wind environmental conditions around buildings in order to study pedestrian-level winds, dispersion of pollutants around buildings etc. Since the development of CWE has somewhat been neglected in North America in comparison to other countries (Japan, Australia, the U.K.), ASCE has established a Task Committee on CFD in Wind Engineering in order to produce a SOA report addressing the issues of Numerical Methodologies in CWE, Turbulence Modelling and Validation of Turbulence Models as well as the Applications for Practitioners and Research Needs in this area. The paper summarizes this report, which is currently in draft form.