Novel Research on Permeable and Porous Elements in Wind Engineering

Dear Colleagues,

With the advantage of their versatility, e.g., in reducing wind loading on downstream objects and affecting turbulence structures, permeable/porous elements are increasingly used in the construction industry, ranging from the external skin facades of buildings to wind barriers used for bridge decks. For buildings, permeable/porous structures ensure ventilation while allowing sunlight penetration, achieving good energy-saving effects. With respect to bridge decks, permeable barriers have been proven effective in protecting vehicles from crosswinds.

However, despite being considered auxiliary structures, permeable/porous elements significantly affect the aerodynamic performance of the overall structure. In fact, the presence of permeable/porous elements may cause strong flow separations, which strongly alter the flow organization around the entire structure and, consequently, the forces exerted by wind. A well-known example is that wind barriers might increase the vortex-induced vibrations (VIVs) of bridge decks. Therefore, their aerodynamic behaviour, and especially the forces, must be characterized.

This Special Issue primarily aims to discuss the aerodynamic performance, applications, and modelling approaches of permeable/porous structures. Given these structures’ wide range of applications, this issue recognizes aerodynamic studies on any building or structure with permeable/porous elements exposed to the wind as valuable contributions. In particular, research on solid fences, as a special case of zero-porosity barriers, will also be considered. Moreover, in considering the difficulties of building reduced-scale models of pores for wind tunnel experiments and the large amounts of computational resources required for such numerical simulations, novel modelling approaches and the evaluations of current modelling methods of permeable/porous elements are particularly welcome.

Original research articles and reviews are also welcome in this Special Issue. Research areas of interest include (but are not limited to) the following:

• The aerodynamic behaviour of permeable/porous elements, e.g., wind barrier, porous skin façades, etc.
• Novel modelling approaches of permeable/porous elements in numerical simulations and wind tunnel experiments.
• Evaluations of the accuracy of current modelling approaches of permeable/porous elements
• Wind loads on the structures with permeable elements.
• Vortex-induced vibrations of bridge decks when adopting porous or solid barriers.
• Sand mitigation measures with barriers.
• The application of trees as windbreakers.

We look forward to receiving your contributions

Dr. Mao Xu
Prof. Dr. Yukio Tamura
Dr. Jingxue Wang
Dr. Luca Patruno
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Wind is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.