Abstract

Low rise wooden buildings are the most common residential housing type for North America. The behavior of these structures subjected to wind load is examined in the present study. Coupling of three individual research methods is used in order to better understand and assess the subject. Full-scale monitoring is the first part of the study. A test building was constructed in Fredericton, NB and was equipped with weather, pressure and load monitoring instrumentation. The behavior of this structure has been monitored since spring 2006. The recorded data have been analyzed and pressure and force coefficients have been computed. The second part of the study, deals with the wind tunnel experiments of the test building. A 1:200 scale model was constructed and tested at the Building Aerodynamics laboratory of Concordia University. The building model was tested for a total number of 15 angles of wind attack and the pressure results were transformed into mean and peak local and area-averaged pressure coefficients. Numerical analysis was used as a supplementary tool for this study. A 3-D linear model was created and finite-element analysis was performed for the selected wind directions. Using the computed stresses at the points of interest (location of full-scale load cells), the force coefficients were evaluated. Pressure distribution comparisons between the full-scale and the wind tunnel results show good agreement. Small discrepancies were attributed to the direction fluctuations of the full-scale records. The force coefficient comparison between the full-scale and the finite element analysis show generally good agreement as well