Wind and Structures
Volume 36, Number 6, 2023, pages 367-377
DOI: 10.12989/was.2023.36.6.367
Extrapolation of wind pressure for low-rise buildings at different scales using few-shot learning
Yanmo Weng and Stephanie G. Paal
Abstract
This study proposes a few-shot learning model for extrapolating the wind pressure of scaled experiments to fullscale measurements. The proposed ML model can use scaled experimental data and a few full-scale tests to accurately predict
the remaining full-scale data points (for new specimens). This model focuses on extrapolating the prediction to different scales
while existing approaches are not capable of accurately extrapolating from scaled data to full-scale data in the wind engineering
domain. Also, the scaling issue observed in wind tunnel tests can be partially resolved via the proposed approach. The proposed
model obtained a low mean-squared error and a high coefficient of determination for the mean and standard deviation wind
pressure coefficients of the full-scale dataset. A parametric study is carried out to investigate the influence of the number of
selected shots. This technique is the first of its kind as it is the first time an ML model has been used in the wind engineering
field to deal with extrapolation in wind performance prediction. With the advantages of the few-shot learning model, physical
wind tunnel experiments can be reduced to a great extent. The few-shot learning model yields a robust, efficient, and accurate
alternative to extrapolating the prediction performance of structures from various model scales to full-scale.
Key Words
few-shot learning; full-scale measurement; machine learning; multiple-scale extrapolation; wind pressure coefficients
Address
Yanmo Weng and Stephanie G. Paal:Zachry Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, United States