Experimental investigation on the various roof pitches of a rural house using low speed wind tunnel test.

The cases of post windstorm that caused damages on the roof part of the rural houses in Malaysia are significantly increase. Thus, the study on the effects of wind flow surrounding the rural houses as a low-rise building become the focus of the present study. In the previous works, the limitation of studies on wind behavior surrounding the high-rise building and low-rise building were getting focus with a simple design without extended house (kitchen house) and overhang. This study focuses more specifically on the effect of wind flow to the rural house with the various roof pitches but constant of overhang length with the presence of kitchen house. The practical investigation using wind tunnel test was performed to simulate the wind flow towards rural house, resulting a pressure distribution and flow visualization surrounding the house. The highest suction (-3.028) was recorded for the model with roof pitch 12° due to the high suction effect at the downwind slope near the leeward core house overhang. The flow visualization of wake region behind the buildings become larger as the roof pitch become steeper. This situation produced suction at the leeward side but the suction value was not severe as roof pitch 12° and 17° due to reverse flows. The positive pressure underneath overhang increases as the overhang length increase. Thus, the roof uplift may occur due to low degree of roof pitch which were 12° and 17° that experienced large suction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]