Strong wind has caused damage to group-arranged quayside container cranes in terminals and ports in recent years. Interference may amplify the wind loads in some cases. However, the interference effect among cranes has rarely been studied. In this study, high-frequency force balance tests were conducted to obtain the wind load of isolated and group-arranged container cranes. The results of the computational fluid dynamics simulation were validated by wind tunnel tests and provided the mean wind loads of all 15 types of member cranes. According to the results from wind tunnel tests, the fluctuating wind loads of each member were generated using the weighted amplitude wave superposition method. Based on dynamic finite element methods, the wind-induced responses were obtained considering the interference effect. It was found that the interference effect is the combined effects of both the shielding effect and the amplification of turbulence. Although in some cases the fluctuating and peak wind loads can increase by up to 16% and 6%, respectively, those in the most unfavorable cases are reduced by the interference effect. The interference factor for extreme nodal deformation is 0.56 and 0.69. The interference effect in container cranes mainly appears as a shielding effect, reducing the wind loads and response of the structures in unfavorable cases.

The wind-resistant design process of roof structures is a complex task due, inter alia, to the temporal-spatial distribution of fluctuating wind loading and to multimode vibration. This process can conceivably be greatly simplified in the case of availability of analytical expressions for the determination of the structural response. In this context, this paper develops analog filter approaches for the representation of wind pressure spectra on large-span roof structures. In conjunction with this representation, integrals which are determinable analytically are used to derive formulas that can be used to compute efficiently the wind-induced structural responses. For this purpose, the cross-spectral model is also approximated by the filter approach for the case of multi-degree-of-freedom roof structures. The validity and efficiency of the approaches are demonstrated by several case studies correlated with wind tunnel tests.

The internal to external pressure ratio in a large-span cylindrical roof building with a dominant gable opening fluctuates dramatically between 0 and 1, significantly impacted by the attenuation of internal pressure. Current theories usually assume this ratio equal to 1 and overlook the attenuation effect. This study investigates four cylindrical roof models with varying opening areas, scale ratios, and wind speeds by wind tunnel tests. It analyzes ratios of mean (C¯pi/C¯pe), fluctuating (σpi/σpe), and peak (Ĉpi/Ĉpe) internal to external pressure to pinpoint factors affecting the internal pressure attenuation. The results highlight that the most pronounced internal pressure attenuation is at the sideward opening. The vortex shedding around the opening is induced by the wind direction, scale ratio, and wind speed. The attenuation effect decreases with lower frequencies of periodic vortex shedding. This effect generally vanishes when the windward or leeward opening ratio (A1.5/V0) exceeds 0.57%. Empirical design formulas are proposed to predict ratios of internal to external pressure considering the attenuation effect. The inertia (CI) and loss coefficients (CL) affected by the internal pressure attenuation are analyzed to estimate the air slug inertia and damping through the opening. A governing equation, incorporating reduction coefficients (C¯eddy, C̃eddy) from empirical design formulas, is applied to precisely compute the attenuated internal pressure in the large-span cylindrical roof building with a dominant gable opening for engineering risk assessment.