Wind Tunnel Study of the Rooftop of a New Railway Station

A new main infrastructure work and sustainable tourism project in the south-southeast region of Mexico is in progress. This project will provide a freight and passenger rail service linking the main cities and tourist areas of the South East of Mexico. The project involves the construction of a passenger terminal within the international airport area. Given the importance and architectural design of the terminal, the designer, requested a wind tunnel study to evaluate wind local effects on the roof of the terminal and revise some wind design hypotheses, since these could be conservative and consequently the current design of this terminal could result in excessive construction costs. This paper presents the results of wind tunnel tests of a rigid scale model of the railway terminal, as well as the statistical analysis to simulate the mean wind speeds and turbulence characteristics of the wind flow in the wind tunnel. The tests included the representation of the roughness characteristics of the terrain around the new terminal, and the construction of an instrumented scale model which was exposed to different wind flow directions to record pressures in the model. The recording system of the wind tunnel allows obtaining pressure histories at each sensor placed on the model. From these histories, average, maximum and minimum pressure coefficients are derived, which can be used to review the design of the structural elements of the new terminal. Results are compared to those provided in the current Wind Design Manual of Mexico, and those obtained in similar structures, as well.