Design and Wind Tunnel Performance Testing of a New Omnidirectional Roof Vent

Low-slope roofs are subjected to potentially high levels of suction pressure as reported by Baskaran and Savage in 2003 in “Wind pressure measurements on full scale flat roofs.” Traditional roof assemblies are prone to failure when the low pressure on the roof surface instigates a transfer of forces to the roof membrane. Existing pressure-equalized roof systems use the power of the wind to transmit low pressure to the space immediately beneath the roof membrane, pulling the membrane down to the roof surface. The object of this study is the design of a wind vent which, when coupled with a single-ply roof membrane in a complete roof assembly, will successfully equalize low pressure throughout the entire field of the roof. The proposed wind vent differs from existing equalizer valves in its use of the Bernoulli effect to create low pressure. The vent is omnidirectional and contains no moving parts. Future study will be required to determine the tributary area of each vent and other roof system parameters.