Mitchell’s project is improving the resilience and survivability of buildings to high winds, including from cyclones and storms. He has conducted controlled full-scale tests as benchmarks for future detailed tests with state of the art pressure loading actuators in a simulated environment and model-scale buildings in a wind tunnel. He is also gathering data from real world examples, and has been part of a research team that deploys mobile weather stations in Queensland in the event of a landfalling cyclone.
By calculating the internal pressures for industrial buildings, Mitchell’s research will give an accurate overall net wind load for a wide range of scenarios, enabling a consistent, optimal design for buildings. This will lead to improvements to wind loading codes and standards in cyclonic and non-cyclonic regions around Australia. Mitchell’s study will improve how buildings are designed for such scenarios, increasing the resilience and survivability of buildings to high winds. He presented his research findings as a Three Minute Thesis at the CRC Research Advisory Forum in 2018, and has had his research published in the Journal of Wind Engineering and Industrial Aerodynamics.
His Researchgate profile can be found here: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mitchell_Humphreys2
Student project
