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Giant Lab Replicates Category 3 Hurricanes
Pickens writes "The WSJ reports that a new $40 million research center built by the Institute for Business & Home Safety in Richburg, SC features a massive test chamber as tall as a six-story building that can hold nine 2,300-square-foot homes on a turntable where they can be subjected to tornado-strength winds generated by 105 giant fans to simulate a Category 3 hurricane. The goal is to improve building codes and maintenance practices in disaster-prone regions even though each large hurricane simulation costs about $100,000. The new IBHS lab will be the first to replicate hurricanes with winds channeling water through homes and ripping off roofs, doors and windows. The new facility will give insurers the ability to carefully videotape what happens as powerful winds blow over structures instead of relying on wind data from universities or computer simulations. The center will also be used to test commercial buildings, agriculture structures, tractor-trailers, wind turbines, and airplanes."
Yeah, generally you don't even try to build to withstand a direct hit from a tornado, it'd just be way too expensive. The odds of any particular building getting smacked by a tornado are fairly small, and even a big tornado affects a much smaller area than your average landfall hurricane.
Designing to survive hurricane force winds is much more feasible, and it's cool to watch some actual experimentation. Note from the video, that right before the house on the left collapses, the front door is pushed open. Once the wind gets into the house, it needs to go somewhere, and it basically lifts the house up allowing it to fall over. You have to bolt the whole house together vertically, from the foundation all the way up to the rafters.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
If they wanted to see what the effect of a class 3 hurricane, they should come to my house and look at my kids rooms. Some people already think I was simulating an F5 tornado.
I asked someone from Environment Canada what the difference between an F4 and F5 tornado was, his answer was "an F4 destroys everything, an F5 destroys everything and cleans up after itself". Given those parameters, it sounds like your kids are only simulating an F4. ;)
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
How much cheaper, really? Let's take the example of having modular prefabbed floors & exterior walls that are available in many configurations so you have design freedom to build what you like. These prefabbed sections can be mass produced, cheaply, and the right combination shipped to the location. Once there, you flip it up, use whatever connection method is needed for the walls and lay down the interlocking floor sections. The prefab sections I saw near Munich even had insulation built into them.
With wood, the wood has to be processed, granted at a much lower cost than the concrete section fabbing. Then it has to be shipped just like the prefabbed. But then it changes - The amount of labour that goes in to laying floor joists, laying & fastening floor sheets (which all results in a boing-ey floor anyway), framing wall sections on the floor then raising them, then ultimately installing insulation and poly, is quite a lot more than I imagine an efficient prefab production line would be.
Note that I have no actual idea of the relative costs of anythign above, but i'm genuinely curious as i'm sure that an efficient prefab system could turn out cheaper, or at least on-par. Then you get the benefit of stronger houses. Oh and there's nothing to stop you doing the internal framing with wood/metal studs, so you still get the freedom to change/customise the internal layout.
I do agree, however, that pure brick or poured concrete buildings would be more expensive. I also agree that *right now* it would be more expensive as an efficient prefab infrastucture would need to be built up over time. With the "PROFIT NOW, NOT LATER!!!" mentality of businesses over here, this is not likely to ever happen.