FULL SCALE TESTING OF A LOW RISE BUILDING

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FULL SCALE TESTING OF A LOW RISE BUILDING
Background
The performance of houses in extreme winds is
still poorly understood due to their ill-defined
load paths. With increasing population in high
wind regions the development of mitigation
strategies is essential to reduce losses.
Wind Damage due to Hurricane Katrina
Objectives
To conduct full scale destructive testing of a
typical Canadian house in a controlled,
repeatable experiment and to evaluate the
performance in extreme winds.
A roof sheathing failure in coastal Mississippi
due to Hurricane Katrina
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Test House
A reaction frame will be assembled around the
house to balance the loads from the pressure
loading actuators (PLAs) and to hold the PLAs in
place
The facility will allow us to understand the
different failure modes of the house under
different loading conditions such as changing the
wind speed or the directions of the wind
relative to the house.
100 Air Bags distributed over the entire House