Wind and Structures

Volume 19, Number 2, 2014, pages 169-184

DOI: 10.12989/was.2014.19.2.169

An alternative method for estimation of annual extreme wind speeds

Yi Hui, Qingshan Yang and Zhengnong Li

Abstract

This paper presents a method of estimation of extreme wind. Assuming the extreme wind follows the Gumbel distribution, it is modeled through fitting an exponential function to the numbers of storms over different thresholds. The comparison between the estimated results with the Improved Method of Independent Storms (IMIS) shows that the proposed method gives reliable estimation of extreme wind. The proposed method also shows its advantage on the insensitiveness of estimated results to the precision of the data. The volume of extreme storms used in the estimation leads to more than 5% differences in the estimated wind speed with 50-year return period. The annual rate of independent storms is not a significant factor to the estimation.

Key Words

extreme wind speed; extreme value estimation; annual maximum; independent storms; weighted least-squares method

Address

Yi Hui and Zhengnong Li: College of civil engineering, Hunan University, Yuelushan, Changsha, Hunan, 410082, China Qingshan Yang: Beijing\'s s Key Laboratory of Structural Wind Engineering and Urban Wind Environment, School of Civil Engineering, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing, 100044, China