Synthesis of non-Gaussian wind pressure time series on low building roofs

This paper presents an efficient and practical method for the digital gener ation of univariate non-Gaussian wind pressure time series on low building roofs. The method, based on the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) approach, esse ntially inverts the Fourier coefficients which ate a linear combination of Fourier amplitude and phase. In this study, the Fourier amplitude part is a ssumed to be known. The Fourier phase capable of inducing non-normality to the time series is carefully modelled and a simple stochastic model with a single parameter is suggested for its simulation. The computation of this s ingle parameter is accomplished by minimizing the sum of the squared errors in higher order statistics such as skewness and kurtosis. The simplicity a nd effectiveness of this methodology have been demonstrated using several m easured non-Gaussian pressure data from various low building roofs under di fferent conditions. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.