A Study of Nonstationary Wind Effects on a Full-Scale Large Cooling Tower Using Empirical Mode Decomposition

Wind effects on structures obtained by field measurements are often found to be nonstationary, but related researches shared by the wind-engineering community are still limited. In this paper, empirical mode decomposition (EMD) is applied to the nonstationary wind pressure time-history samples measured on an actual 167-meter high large cooling tower. It is found that the residue and some intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) of low frequencies produced by EMD are responsible for the samples’ nonstationarity. Replacing the residue by the constant mean and subtracting the IMFs of low frequencies can help the nonstationary samples become stationary ones. A further step is taken to compare the loading characteristics extracted from the original nonstationary samples with those extracted from the processed stationary samples. Results indicate that nonstationarity effects on wind loads are notable in most cases. The passive wind tunnel simulation technique based on the assumption of stationarity is also examined, and it is found that the technique is basically conservative for use.