Influence of an upstream building on the wind-induced mean suction on the flat roof of a low-rise building

The effect of an upstream building on the suction forces on the flat roof of a low-rise building placed in the wake of the former is analyzed. The analysis has been performed by wind tunnel testing of a flat roof, low-rise building model equipped with pressure taps on the roof and different block-type buildings (only configurations where the upstream building is as high or higher than the downstream one are considered in this paper). The influence of the distance between both buildings on the wind loads on the downstream building roof is analyzed, as well as the height of the upstream one and the wind angle of incidence. Experimental results reveal that the wind load increases as the relative height of the upstream building increases, the wind load being highest for intermediate distances between buildings, when a passage between them is formed.

Intermittent pluri-sink model and the emergence of complex heterogeneity patterns: a simple paradigm for explaining complexity in soil chemical distributions

The spatial complexity of the distribution of organic matter, chemicals, nutrients, pollutants has been demonstrated to have multifractal nature (Kravchenco et al. [1]). This fact supports the possibility of existence of some emergent heterogeneity structure built under the evolution of the system. The aim of this note is providing a consistent explanation to the mentioned results via an extremely simple model.