Summary
Rain, which is given a horizontal velocity component by the influence of wind, is termed winddriven or driving rain. Driving rain is one of the main sources to the amount of moisture a building is exposed to, and thereby contributes to the processes deteriorating the building envelope. Examples of damages to the building envelope that the onslaught of driving rain directly or indirectly can contribute to are: cracks caused by the freezing of water absorbed in the facade, mould or rot, corrosion of concrete reinforcements and soiling patterns. Knowledge about the exposure of a building to driving rain is needed in order to minimise the deteriorating processes, and thus contributes to ensure a satisfactory performance of the building design.
This work is meant as an introduction to the field of numerical quantification of driving rain on buildings. Focus is set on three-dimensional simulation of the wind flow and raindrop trajectories using CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics). lnterest is also paid to some specific properties of rainfall, such as drop size distributions and drag forces on raindrops. The study includes a detailed description of a method to calculate the driving rain distribution on a building, as well as application of the method to a rectangular facade. A qualitative evaluation of the results indicates that the method can be used to calculate the mean distribution of driving rain on simple geometries with sufficient accuracy.