Award-winning papers in 2022 Free

The George Stephenson Medal, awarded to the second best overall paper, was awarded to Daniels and Xie (2022).

Understanding and predicting the effects of wind loading on a structure is necessary for safe, effective, and economical engineering design. Wind tunnel techniques often provide data that is not sufficient for the structural engineer. With increasing advances in computational capabilities, Computational Fluid Dynamics techniques have recently become feasible to complement experiments. Of these, one of the most effective is Large-Eddy Simulation (LES). The application of LES to analyse wind loading, and aeroelastic effects on structures are only a recent venture in the field. This paper reviews the progress made over the last few decades for the analysis of wind flow around slender structures, and the more recent analysis incorporating the effects of freestream turbulence. First, a review of the literature is carried out for generating freestream turbulence approaches, of which many are used for the analysis of surface pressures on an isolated object. Subsequently, a review is made on wind tunnel experiment and LES for aeroelastic analysis of bridge sections. The recent advances in the understanding of turbulence effects on the aerostatic responses are summarised. Finally, the future of LES and its relationship with wind tunnel experiment for wind loading analysis are discussed.

The Telford Premium Prize, presented to the best paper published in Engineering and Computational Mechanics, was awarded to Cannon et al. (2022).

‘Long-duration’ blast waves can exert damaging drag loads on finite structural columns that are complex to characterise. In the absence of suitable drag coefficients, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) can be the only satisfactory approach for calculating blast loading. Commercially available CFD software with shockwave modelling capabilities require solving the Euler equations that assume inviscid flow. Two Eulerian solver types are generally used: Godunov and flux-corrected transport, the latter of which is commonly perceived as more accurate for shockwave problems. This study investigates the capability of both solvers for calculating drag loading from long-duration blast interaction with an I-section, verified through comparison to experimental measurements. No solver sensitivity was observed for pressures on exposed geometry surfaces, although discrepancies were observed for shielded surfaces, particularly during later stage interaction. The Godunov scheme demonstrated increased computational efficiency and reliability in comparison to the flux-corrected transport solver type, generating results in better agreement to experimental data. The results provided new understanding of solver sensitivity for modelling long-duration blast drag loading on finite targets using Eulerian CFD analyses.