Recent Advancements in “Full-Scale” Wind Engineering
                                                                                                                                                                                              Rescheduled
Forrest Masters, PhD, PE                                                                                                                                               Thursday, January 29, 2014
Associate Professor of Civil and Coastal Engineering, Program                                                                                                         
Director for Industrial Relations, Engineering School for Sustainable                                                                                                       
Infrastructure and Environment, University of Florida

Field research and reconnaissance activities in tropical cyclones have steadily increased during the last two decades, which have led to new insights into the hurricane boundary layer and the wind loading of low-rise structures. Concurrently, wind engineers have developed new facilities capable of testing full-size structures or building systems under dynamic wind loading. This presentation provides an overview of a selected number of these “full-scale” projects and demonstrates how they are interconnected.

Dr. Masters’ research interests primarily focus on the hurricane boundary layer and its effect on the built environment, with emphasis on the advancement of damage mitigation strategies and building product innovation. He is one of several ‘full-scale’ academic researchers in the international wind engineering community, having conducted experiments in (1) extreme wind events to study wind, wind-driven rain and structural loading and (2) the laboratory, where full-scale building systems are subjected to realistic simulations of fluctuating wind load and rain conditions to evaluate their performance. Computational and theoretical research is integral to these efforts. His findings appear in wind engineering, building science, meteorological, arboricultural and psychosocial literature. Dr. Masters has received support from more than 25 grants from state, federal and private sources, including the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program and the Major Research Instrumentation Program. He is a reviewer for 16 journals and an active member of the American Association of Wind Engineering and the ASCE Technical Council on Wind Engineering, serving on the structural and environmental wind engineering committees and chairing the Task Committee on Wind-Driven Rain Effects. In 2014, Dr. Masters was awarded the junior International Association of Wind Engineering award, which recognizes significant and original contributions to research by an individual under the age of 40.