Thursday, February 9, 2012, 140 DeBartolo Hall, 3:30pm

Reframing Wind Engineering: New Climate and New Tools
Horia Hangan
Project Leader, The Wind Engineering, Energy and Environment(WindEEE) Dome
Professor and Director, The Boundary Layer and Wind Tunnel Laboratory, The University of Western Ontario

The current engineering practice involves two types of climates for designing buildings and structures. The Tropical wind systems and is mainly associated with the coastal regions. The Extra-tropical climate involves long term synoptic wind systems which dominate most of the continental areas. During the last decade it became clear that a third wind climate, dominated by thunderstorm high intensity winds has a huge impact on the interior region of North America producing more than 65% of the damage. Thunderstorm manifestations like Downburts and Tornados impact buildings and structures in a dynamic and complex way which was never considered before in design. At the same time with new, large scale physical laboratories emerge and complement the existing boundary layer wind tunnels used mostly for the simulation of the extra-tropical wind climate. New hurricane facilities are under final certification at Florida International University and IBHS in South Carolina. The university of Western Ontario has taken the lead in simulating thunderstorm winds with the construction of the WindEEE Dome.

With a new climate and new tools, Wind Engineering is now reframing.
Dr. Hangan is a Professor in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Western Ontario, and a Director of The Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel Laboratory. Professor Hangan's research is in the simulation and impact of high intensity winds (downbursts and tornados) wind energy (sitting in complex terrain, wind turbine blade aerodynamics) and wind environmental impacts (atmospheric pollution-dispersion, particulate transport). He authored more than 200 journal and conference publications, acts as reviewer and is part of the Editorial Board of several International Journals. In 2009, Dr. Hangan was awarded a grant of 23.7 M$ funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) and the Ontario Research Fund (ORF) to build a novel Wind Engineering, Energy and Environment (WindEEE) dome facility (www.windeee.ca).