A comparative study of full-scale and modeled hurricane wind loads on residential structures based on non-Gaussian statistical models

The purpose of this research is to compare full-scale and model-scale overland hurricane extreme wind loads on residential structures. To accomplish this task, statistical tools for peak value estimation are identified for this purpose, by taking account the non-Gaussian properties of wind pressure data. Meanwhile, a simple and efficient non-Gaussian simulation method is developed from Hermite-based translation process.;Loads from two subject houses from an existing full scale roof pressure load datasets are compared with wind loads developed in three wind tunnel facilities on scale models of the two subject houses. Each wind tunnel fabricated its own scale models of the full-scale houses to their ideal geometric scale, and conduct wind load studies using its own methods. In this full-scale to model-scale comparison, the accuracy of wind tunnel methods to estimate peak loads on low-rise residential structures with complex geometry is assessed. Additionally the peak values estimated from full-scale and wind tunnel datasets are compared to the GCp values in ASCE 7 design standard.