Wind load determination using field data and wind tunnel studies on residential buildings

Abstract The Caribbean islands from Grenada through Cuba continued to suffer wind damage during the 2004 and 2005 hurricanes seasons. Engineering research is urgently needed to minimize the damaging effects of these winds on residential buildings. The House Instrumentation System of the Florida Coastal Monitoring Program successfully recorded high-resolution wind pressure on a single family house from within Tropical Storm Isidore (2002) and Hurricane Ivan (2004). This paper briefly reviews the process of full-scale tests and presents the wind pressure data collected in two extreme wind events. The corresponding wind tunnel model studies were conducted in the Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel at Clemson University, and these results were compared with field measurement data to validate the current wind tunnel testing techniques. The comparison of full-scale and wind tunnel tests showed that the wind tunnel simulation results generally agree with the hurricane wind loads observed in two extreme wind events, through the peak negative pressure coefficients were insufficient to be reproduced at several test locations