Get wind speeds directly from your design code, via SkyCiv’s interactive design wind speed map

Calculating wind loads is not always an easy process. That’s why SkyCiv has released a free interactive wind speed map to help engineers pull wind speeds on various locations from simply entering in a site location. Currently, the wind speed map supports the following design codes and site locations:

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SkyCiv’s Design Wind Speed Map

By simply entering the project address, Zip Code or city (or even click-dragging the red pin) – the wind speed and elevations will immediately display on both the map (via a dialog box) and the left column input fields. These values can be changed at any time for use with the ASCE 7, AS/NZS 1170.2, NBCC 2015, NSCP 2015, CTE DB SE-AE, or EN 1991-1-4 pressure calculations.

Check the basic wind speed map for specific locations!

The various design code wind speed zones have been digitized and rebuilt as this interactive wind speed map for engineers to get accurate wind speeds by locations. The free tool allows up to 3 entries per day before it requires you to sign up for a SkyCiv Free Account. From here you can make as many calls as you like to get the wind speeds of various locations.

Basic Wind Speed Calculation

SkyCiv digitized the wind speed maps for each reference code and converted it to GeoJSON files. These files are then processed at the backend using the Google Maps API and other geospatial analysis libraries to process the wind speed values. There are two ways how the basic wind speeds are calculated. First is depending on whether the location is inside the wind region/zone with specific wind speed value (AS/NZS 1170, NBCC 2015, IS 875, CTE DB SE, EN 1991, and CFE Viento) and the second is interpolating the wind speed value from wind contours (ASCE 7-10/ASCE 7-16, NSCP 2015, BS EN 1991-1-4, and I.S. EN 1991-1-4).

For the first method, it will check if the latitude and longitude of the site location is inside one of the wind region polygons. If the location is inside the region or zone, it will get the corresponding wind speed value for the region or zone. Note that the boundaries of these converted wind speed map were simplified to optimize the calculation of this process. For an instance, an island is represented by a simplified polygon covering the whole area instead of using the shoreline. An example of this method is applied to IS 875-3 Wind speed determination.

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For wind contours, the SkyCiv Load Generator use the points of these polylines to create Triangulated Irregular Network (TIN). Then the solver will iterate on these created triangles to check whether the latitude and longitude of the site location is inside one of these polygons. Once it detects the triangle where the site is located, it will interpolate the wind speed value from the 3 known value points. An example of this method is implemented in ASCE 7-16 wind speed determination.

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In conclusion, wind speed maps are important for structural engineers to design buildings as per the site location. The engineer will start by getting a design wind speed to use as the basis of their future design pressure calculations.

If you’re looking for examples on how to calculate wind design pressures from design wind speeds, please visit one of the following articles:

• ASCE 7-10 Wind Load Calculation Example
• AS/NZS 1170.2 Wind Load Calculation Example
• EN 1991-1-4 Wind Load Calculation Example
• IS 875-3 Wind Load Calculation Example
• ASCE 7-16 Wind Load Calcultion Example for L-shaped Building

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