Wind loads on low buildings: in the wake of Alan Davenportʹs contributions

The paper reviews the evolution of knowledge and its current state regarding the evaluation of wind loads on low buildings by placing particular emphasis on Alan Davenportʹs contributions. These contributions have paved the way to the current state-of-the-art and have influenced the thinking of not only Alanʹs closest collaborators but also of other researchers in this area around the world. The paper will provide a brief historical perspective, followed by some detailed description of the University of Western Ontarioʹs research on wind loads on low buildings carried out in the 1970s. Visualizing the wake of Davenportʹs contributions in this area, the paper will refer to the influence of this knowledge in the formulation of design load provisions in contemporary wind standards and codes of practice. The paper will also discuss the status of computational wind engineering as well as the so-called computer-aided wind engineering in the evaluation of wind pressures on low buildings.