Measured hurricane wind pressure on full-scale residential structures: Analysis and comparison to wind tunnel studies and ASCE-7

Each year hurricanes cause devastating damage along the southeast coastline of the United States, where the State of Florida is one of the most vulnerable. The work presented in this dissertation is the result of full-scale measurements conducted during the last six Atlantic Hurricane Seasons (1999-2005). The primary objective was to quantify over-land near-surface hurricane wind velocity and uplift loads on residential structures using full-scale experiential methods.; The research goal is to help reduce hurricane wind damage to residential structures by providing "ground-truth" data about the intensity of the wind, the resultant loads on residential structures, and the performance of these structures in high winds. The full-scale hurricane data measurement was conducted with two separate data collection systems. The first system consists of portable weather towers deployed in the path of landfalling hurricanes to capture the wind field behavior at a height of 5 and 10 meters, as well as temperature, humidity, rainfall and barometric pressure. The second system uses pressure sensors to collect wind pressure data on the roofs of occupied residential structures along the Florida and the Carolinas coastlines. To date, 32 houses along the Florida coastline, 4 along South Carolina, and 2 along the North Carolina coastline have been outfitted with these sensors. The data collected from these houses are compared to wind tunnel model studies on scale models of the subject homes.; During the hurricanes of 2004 and 2005 several data sets were collected from homes that experienced sustained hurricane level winds. A total of 16 homes were instrumented during 3 of the 2004 storms, and 6 homes were instrumented over 3 storms in 2005. Data were collected from 9 of these homes in sustained hurricane level winds, a first in experimental wind engineering. Details are provided regarding the deployment of the portable towers and the instrumentation of the coastal homes and analysis of this full-scale data are presented along with comparison between wind tunnel models and the ASCE-7 wind load provisions. Implications regarding the current state of knowledge of extreme wind loading in low-rise structures are provided. Preliminary analysis of the full-scale vs. wind tunnel homes presented in this dissertation suggests that it may potentially impact wind load standards. These comparison studies suggest that the peak negative pressure coefficient obtained from the full-scale data exceeded the ASCE-7 coefficient (component and cladding) for the corresponding roof zones of high suction areas.