Wind field simulation for structural engineering purposes

This paper offers a survey of the issue of wind velocity modelling and simulation; the theme is studied considering stationary multivariate stochastic process, according to the prescribed cross-spectral density matrix. It also analyses extension to generation of vector fields and compares AR, ARMA and Shinozuka-Deodatis approaches in application to both small and real size examples. A number of 'quality indices' are chosen and used to assess the performance of the different numerical procedures. Wavelets are used together with standard Fourier transform in the process of checking the quality of the signals generated. Finally, the present study provides some guidelines concerning the optimal parameters to be chosen for the application of AR and ARMA procedures and a comment on the numerical efficiency of the different generation algorithms. Copyright (C) 2004 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.