Wind speed inference from environmental flow-structure interactions, part 2: leveraging unsteady kinematics

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that the amplitude of unsteady structural sway in trees can be used to infer local wind speed, providing a new method for flow-structure interaction-based anemometry applicable across diverse tree species.

Contribution

It introduces a physical model linking dynamic sway amplitude to wind speed, expanding previous mean bending approaches to unsteady kinematics for environmental flow measurement.

Findings

Model accurately estimates wind speed from tree sway data.

Normalization allows model generalization across different tree species.

Field data confirms the robustness of sway amplitude as an anemometric signal.

Abstract

This work explores the relationship between wind speed and time-dependent structural motion response as a means of leveraging the rich information visible in flow-structure interactions for anemometry. We build on recent work by Cardona et al. (2021), which presented an approach using mean structural bending. Here we present the amplitude of the dynamic structural sway as an alternative signal that can be used when mean bending is small or inconvenient to measure. A force balance relating the instantaneous loading and instantaneous deflection yields a relationship between the incident wind speed and the amplitude of structural sway. This physical model is applied to two field datasets comprising 13 trees of 4 different species exposed to ambient wind conditions. Model generalization to the diverse test structures is achieved through normalization with respect to a reference condition. The model agrees well with experimental measurements of the local wind speed, suggesting that tree sway amplitude can be used as an indirect measurement of mean wind speed, and is applicable to a broad variety of diverse trees.