Wind Loads

Besides Current Loads, wind loads exert significant forces on a seastead. This is important to quantify required anchor or propulsion strength.

Winds, like currents, are strongly dependent on geographical location. Even moreso than currents, they are very time-dependent. Average and maximum wind speeds can be used to give a characterization.

The maximum wind speed in the clubstead report is 19m/s, during a hundered year storm. Winds of 10m/s are considered common, and they are taken as an average winload figure.

A cylinder with a height of 20m and a width of 10m would experience 10kN of load in 10m/s winds. Velocity dependance is predominantly quadratic.

As such, wind loading and current loading are in the same ballpark, in terms of magnitude. Given the correlation between current and wind direction, we might consider these loads as reinforcing eachother all the time, as a worst case scenario.