Abstract

Several studies have been carried out on the evaluation of wind-induced pressures on building envelopes. However, there is very limited research on wind-induced forces on the main structural elements of a building including its foundation. Thus, a full-scale monitoring research project was initiated to examine the wind-induced structural forces for a low-rise wood building. The field facilities include two weather stations and a test house equipped with load and pressure sensors. The house is resting on top of twenty-seven 3-axis load cells and is structurally isolated, i.e., the only points of contact between the foundation wall and the superstructure are the load cells. Simultaneously to the load monitoring, 40 pressure taps are recording the envelope pressures both on the roof and the wall surfaces. In addition to the field monitoring, a scaled model of the house was tested in a boundary layer wind tunnel using three different upstream terrain configurations that provided varying levels of turbulence characteristics suitable for comparisons with full-scale values. The analysis of the wind speed and direction field data confirmed the non-uniform variation of the basic terrain properties over the wind direction and this was also verified in the comparison of the field with the wind tunnel results. These comparisons were made in the form of both envelope pressures and total uplift forces at the foundation level and provided useful insight regarding the wind load path inside the structural elements of the building. Experimental findings were also compared to the Canadian Code and American Standard wind provisions and indicated an underestimation of the total uplift force when using the code and standard provisions in some cases.