Peak distributions and peak factors of non-Gaussian wind pressure on a complex-shaped tall building

In this paper, a new estimation of upcrossing rate in the Sadek-Simiu procedure is introduced with the aid of the Gamma distribution as a parent distribution of a non-Gaussian process. Then, the Weibull distribution is proposed to model the peaks of a non-Gaussian process, and the so-called Weibull peak factor is further developed to predict the mean extremes of the non-Gaussian process. The Sadek-Simiu procedure is employed to determine the shape parameter of the Weibull distribution and in turn the mean extremes of the non-Gaussian process. The method by making use of the translation processes approach (i.e., the Sadek-Simiu procedure) and the Weibull peak factor is called as the translated peak process method for both modeling the peak distribution of a non-Gaussian process and predicting its mean extreme value. Wind-induced fluctuating pressure on a complex-shaped tall building has been used as a typical set of non-Gaussian processes to demonstrate the effectiveness of the translated peak process method.