Kennedy announces $475,000 grant for wind tunnel research

UB will receive a $475,000 federal grant to purchase equipment that supports wind tunnel research into hurricanes, thunderstorm downbursts and other extreme weather events.

The funding, announced today at Ketter Hall by Rep. Tim Kennedy, comes from the National Institute of Standards and Technology. It will further solidify UB’s position as one of the nation’s most dynamic universities for multi-hazard engineering research, with a focus on disaster resilience.

“Communities are facing natural disasters with increasing frequency and intensity,” Kennedy said. “With this funding, we take preparedness to the next level, building in protective measures from the ground up and ultimately strengthening critical infrastructure and saving lives.” 

UB will use the award to purchase instruments for its multi-fan wind tunnel, which is part of the university’s Structural Engineering and Earthquake Simulation Laboratory. Each of the wind tunnel’s 64 fans can be individually controlled, allowing researchers to reproduce and study complex wind events.

“This funding will help enable UB to further its mission of serving people and communities threatened by extreme weather,” said Kemper Lewis, dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. “It will also provide incredible opportunities to educate students — both graduate and undergraduate students — with cutting-edge tools that are critical to solving society’s greatest challenges. We thank Congressman Tim Kennedy for his continued leadership and support of UB.”

Specifically, UB will add to the wind tunnel:

• Passive turbulence generators. These instruments enable researchers to efficiently and accurately generate the atmospheric boundary layer — the lowest layer in Earth’s atmosphere directly influenced by its surface — in extreme wind events.
• High-performance workstations that leverage the power of artificial intelligence to enable the wind tunnel to generate targeted transient wind fields with greater accuracy and efficiency.
• Servo motors for experiments that address how wind loads impact buildings, bridges and other structures affected by aging, climate change and other factors.

“These new instruments will greatly enhance the capabilities of UB’s multi-fan wind tunnel, which is designed to reproduce, at scale, the effects of extreme winds, including hurricanes and tornadoes,” said Andrew Whittaker, the grant’s principal investigator and SUNY Distinguished Professor in the Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering. “Research using the upgraded wind tunnel will support the development of new engineering tools and methods for the delivery of cost-effective infrastructure, including buildings and long-span bridges, that is resilient to extreme winds.”

Teng Wu, professor of civil engineering and a wind engineer, noted that extreme wind events are becoming more common and damaging, pointing out that several tornadoes have touched down in Western New York over the past few months.

“If we can reproduce these complex wind fields in a controlled environment such as this tunnel, we can better understand how extreme winds interact with the built environment, including buildings, long-span bridges and industrial infrastructure,” Wu said.

“With an understanding of this interaction, we can both develop engineering and simulation tools to design resilient structures and revise building and construction standards as needed to meet societal needs.”