Wind and Water Loading on Antennas, Vessels, Buildings and Dams

A key challenge to any analysis project is load determination, although one can use formulas and code guidelines to approximate wind and water loading (e.g., ASCE/SEI 7-22 which supersedes ASCE 7-16), these approximations provide guidance but can leave structures exposed to unforeseen effects or require unnecessary material additions.With today’s CFD and FEA tools, it is not necessary to guess but just map the actual wind or water induced loading onto the structure. Predictive Engineering has been doing such combined fluid structure interaction (FSI) analyses for many years across diverse industries from automotive, aerospace, civil engineering and military applications. We are particularly proud of our work in the detailed mapping of wind loading onto vibration sensitive structures such as antennas and tall slender ASME Section VIII, Division 2 pressure vessels. Other applications have involved hypersonic aerospace structures down slowly rotating hydroelectric dam impellers. This breath of experience allows us to provide insights and new ideas to our clients regardless of the type of wind or water or squishy material (soil, gravel, mineral processing, etc.) may be interacting with their structure of interest.