WIND-INDUCED GROUND-SURFACE PRESSURES AROUND A SINGLE-FAMILY HOUSE

Wind induces a ground-surface pressure field around a building that ca n substantially affect the flow of soil gas and thereby the entry of r adon and other soil-gas contaminants into the building. To quantify th e effect of the wind-induced ground-surface pressure held on contamina nt entry rates, the mean ground-surface pressure field was experimenta lly measured in a wind tunnel for several incidence angles of the wind , two atmospheric boundary layers, and two house geometries. The exper imentally measured ground-surface pressure fields are compared with th ose predicted by a k-epsilon turbulence model. Despite the fundamental limitations in applying a k-epsilon model to a system with flow separ ation, predictions from the numerical simulations were good for the tw o wind incidence angles tested.