No. 1 - Structural Design of Buildings for Northern Australia

NASH has developed a new technical note to assist designers when designing for Northern Australia. Due to the very high wind speeds associated with tropical cyclones, buildings in these northern regions require particular attention to both structural design and detailing to ensure that the applied actions can be resisted and transferred to the foundations.  Wind pressures can be up to 6 times greater than those designed for the southern parts of Australia due to:

•      higher wind speeds

•      greater internal pressure

•      lower terrain roughness due to disallowing the effect of vegetation in cyclonic regions.

Whilst the Technical Note was written specially for cyclonic regions, most of the principles apply to buildings constructed in non cyclonic regions.