Hurricane Simulator to Destroy Full Size Building

Anonymous Coward writes "This is a shameless plug, but I thought Slashdot readers might be interested in the hurricane simulator system the company I work for (Cambridge Consultants) helped develop for the University of Western Ontario. The BBC article is light on the kind of technical details Slashdot readers enjoy, so here are some titbits. The servomotors for the 100+ valves are controlled over an IPv4, gigabit Ethernet network connected to an Athlon dual-core AMD64 PC. The entire real-time control system runs on this machine, utilizing well above 90% of each processor core, and roughly 30% of the network capacity. The sampling frequency of the control system places a huge demand on the machine, with about 70,000 context switches taking place every second. Yes, it runs Linux. "

Comments

Linux doomsday device

[kestasjk]

The disturbing thing is that this isn't the first Linux installation on a machine which is designed to destroy buildings..

Doubts...

[Aladrin]

I have doubts that you can accurately simulate a hurricane without the space around the house. Some damage is done directly by the wind, yes, but there's a LOT of damage that is done by the wind blowing things into other things and weakening them.

Do you randomly throw in pieces of tin roof and stop signs to simulate that? And trees? I doubt it, since there isn't enough space in your simulator for that.

As for being "perfectly repeatable", I have doubts for that as well. That assumes that you could build the exact same house over and over. The article even states that the placement of the nails in the house matters, and I can't see anyone being that perfect.

Overall, I think it's a neat project, but unlikely to really provide more insight than 'yeah, wind fscks shit up.'

Re:Doubts...

[MrSquirrel]

Yes, flying debris can punch holes in houses and such, but WIND is what will completely tear the house down (remember seing roofs blown off on your t.v. and whole houses collapsing?). The point is, they're NOT going to be able to do a goddamn thing about flying debris (well, they could build all houses out of 10" of tempered steel), what they are trying to do is make houses designed to be as hurricane resistant as possible.
FTA:"This is relevant because most of the damage to houses occurs in places where there are sudden changes in pressure, such as at the corners and edges of the building.
"You get swirling and rapid changes from positive to negative pressure," said Mr Wilkinson.
"If you were going to pull a panel off a roof you wouldn't just heave on it, you'd try to waggle it, and that's the most destructive thing for the wind to do.""

Storm Surge

[NorthWestFLNative]

They're forgetting the most destructive part of a hurricane. Granted strong winds can and will do a significant amount of damage (I still remember what my parents house looked like after Ivan), but the most damage is done along the coastline where they get hit by storm surge. That's not something that can be replicated by a wind tunnel on a full scale. I drove along the southern Mississippi coast about 3 weeks ago. There is wind damage for miles inland, which I would expect, but it's nothing major. However the coastline is devastated. The first floors of buildings are completely washed out, destroying most of the buildings completely. The ones that were multi-story are collapsing in on themselves because their support is gone. Testing building construction in a simulator is a good place to start, but I hope it doesn't give people a false sense of security.

Winds vs. Water

[digitaldc]

"As a result, there is great interest in making buildings safer and more resilient to the damaging effects of extreme weather."

Well the winds could potentially destroy the home, but the mold and rot that comes from the standing water could render it worthless.