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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."
Tornado Strength? I think that's rather more than the Category 3 hurricane!
This news story blows.
Now, if they would just test homes made out of straw, sticks, and bricks and see if in fact, a straw house can be reinforced to withstand big bad wolf strength winds.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
Nothing new here. When I was a kid I had a program that would simulate fires, tornadoes, air and boat crashes, earthquakes, nuclear disasters, and even Godzilla, for far less than $100,000 a pop.
This makes me wonder if they are doing this because scientists say that Global Warming will increase the strength and frequency of hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes and other natural disasters.
Why not try to combat the sources of global warming at the same time? Green, renewable energy might also help the insurance industry save money.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I saw this a couple of days ago under the headline "Hundreds of Giant Fans Rip House Apart". I thought it was talking about football fans.
I always wonder this. Even in non-hurricane zones, houses in Europe (England & Germany is all I know about) are made of brick or poured/prefabbed concrete.
Why does it have to be so different over here? It's always boggled my mind with all the wooden houses going up. Even 'brick' houses are just wooden houses with a brick fascia( Yes, I know, some older buildings are proper brick).
Its a lot cheaper, easier, and quicker to build homes out of wood, not to mention the ease of internal reconfiguration. It makes sense if you're in a county with rapid population expansion, especially if that country also prefers new and shiny to old and solid.
I am very confused with the replies I read here (see above).
My first thought when I heard about this was: Awesome! In big capital letters.
I am a fan of overpowered machines that dwarf anything else... and this is just really really big, and it was built with the sole purpose to destroy things... It's a really cool toy!
However, the average slashdotter seem to find quite a few things wrong with this... or they just make a joke about it (+1 for jokes).
Is there something wrong with me? Am I alone?
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
Wasn't that done by the Mythbusters last week? Only instead of a bunch of fans they used one jet engine. Yay! Efficiency!
The game.
we just had a tornado in my part of NYC last month and only the trees fell down. all the homes are made of brick and concrete and all survived intact even though the tornado passed right over us.
Sure, but then don't complain if the hurricane/tornado takes your house (or the neighbourhood) down.
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.
One could even test crosswind, tailwind, or gail force wind landings...
I'm in my right mind and I have the answer to everything!
I forgot to address "easier" and "quicker".
I think the prefab options I mentioned above would be both. It's quicker/easier to deliver and raise a wall rather than deliver, take 2*4's to the floor, build wall on the floor, raise wall, install insulation/poly when house is framed.
And I forgot to mention another step of the wood-option. Fitting the sheathing to the exterior.
I just read "Giant Crab replaces Category 3 Hurricane"... need to cut down on the cheetos.
Call me when a category 3 hurricane whips the scattered debris together and creates a giant lab. That will be news.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
In NZ, where wood is also very popular. It is often easier to comply with earth quake building codes. A house with give does much better than one that does not. Its easier to use wood for this.
However there are limitations. The vast majority of houses are 1 floor with the odd house with 2 floor. Once you hit 3 floors or more, prefab concrete and in place pored concrete become very common.
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
It wasn't a tornado. Sorry. (I live in queens.)
It was just very windy in a place that isn't used to it. The wooden prefab apartments in flushing didn't fall down either - And they are basically all wood frame + sheet rock.
I'm a concientious
A professor once said "an EF4 will clear the concrete slab the house was built on, an EF5 will clear the ground the concrete slab was built on". Don't know if it is a little bit of an exaggeration, but I would rather not find out.
By locating in South Carolina they will get to test the test building sooner or later with a real hurricane!
I always wonder this. Even in non-hurricane zones, houses in Europe (England & Germany is all I know about) are made of brick or poured/prefabbed concrete.
In England at least, this has a lot to do with the first building codes brought in after the Great Fire Of London in 1666 . The codes specified non-flammable building materials, eg brick or stone.
To this day, almost all (if not all) houses are brick built, including the suburban tracts that would look familiar to Americans. AFAIK pre-fab concrete was a big thing in the 1950s-60s, mostly for government-built 'council houses' and especially tower blocks (what a USian might call a 'project'). This method fell out of favour in the UK after a pre-fab concrete tower block partially collapsed after a gas explosion in 1968: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronan_Point
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It's not that much quicker. A good framing crew can put the whole house up in a few days. It's weird when you're monitoring a job. The sitework seems to take forever and it doesn't look like that much is going on. Then the framing starts and in a couple days there's this big wooden house that appeared out of nowhere. And you think damn, this thing is like 80% done, we'll be finished in no time. Then all of the interior build-out starts, and it takes months and feels like it'll never end.
Also framing tends to be very mistake tolerant. If the designer or the builder did something wrong, it's generally not a big deal to tear it out and rebuild it better. All of the framing works together to provide strength to the house, so temporarily removing any single stud/joist/section of wall/whatever usually won't result in collapse, as there's plenty of redundancy in the structure.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
A tornado can take down anything man is going to build above ground. None of the housing I saw in Germany was going to stand up to an EF3+ any better than your average track home. For an idea here's the description of what an F5 did in 1985 "At Wheatland Sheet and Tube, the asphalt was scoured off the parking lot, and shards of sheet metal and routing slips were left wedged beneath the remaining asphalt.".
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Until recently, I thought that they were building from wood in the UK. There were some new houses built opposite my house when I was younger that were framed with wood. However, I recently found out that the insurance companies there won't touch wood houses and that there was a spate of building houses from wood in the 80's. That's about when those ones opposite went up. Maybe the codes were temporarily laxed?
As for the prefab, the type I was referring to was not for 'project' type council houses. This was for individual custom house builds. You wouldn't know it was a prefab build by looking at it. It just happened to be on my bike ride to work near Munich so I was watching with interest. The main structure (ground floor sections, ground floor walls, 1st floor sections, 1st floor walls) went up in, I kid you not, 2 days. I watched my wood-framed house in Canada being built and although I had the same 'fook me that was quick' feeling once the main framing started, it was by no means even comparable to the speed the prefab one in Munich went up.
These are just my observations.
There's no reason for a hurricane to be anything more than a public nuisance. I lived under Wilma for a whole 48 hours (just leaving five years ago tonight as a matter of fact), and Emily only a few months before that. How did we prepare? Bought lots of beer (before they cut off liquor sales a full 36 hours before it hit, the bastards!), tied down the water tank on the roof and pruned a few trees (one still fell over anyway), probably didn't need to board up the windows. Power was back on in the center of town within 12 hours. Phones (land lines, cell phones worked right away) were another story, took a month. Most of our houses are concrete block with reinforced columns in the corners. More than sufficient to withstand a cat5. You don't need a study to figure that out. A note to you all up in New Orleans, it helps to build above sea level. But let's have a study to be sure. You are creating a bureaucratic paradise up there, but you still have some catching up to do :-)
I can tell you that hurricanes sound really cool.
Todos mis movimientos están friamente calculados
The wooden frame house I'm living in now was built in the early 50's and has survived three hurricanes and several tropical storms. It creaked and groaned a bit, ok a lot, during Ike in 2008 but didn't suffer any damage. Not so much as a broken window. IIRC my neighborhood had sustained winds in 90mph range with recorded gusts up around 110mph. The house endured that beating for good four hours while the massive storm passed over.
Wood is much stronger than most people realize. The softwoods commonly used in home construction are also quite flexible and can deflect a lot before failing in a structural situation. When a wood frame house suffers a structural failure it's often somewhat graceful and the structure retains some of strength and doesn't just collapse on the people inside. A brick or concrete structure will hold up well until it hits a breaking point, then failure is complete and often catastrophic. Also concrete is ugly, I'd hate living in a concrete house.
Cheers,
Josh
"Listen: We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different!" - Kurt Vonnegut
Prefab modular houses can be cheaper than stick built, and they generally have good hurricane resistance since they have to be able to be carried to their site by truck. Stick built is a known quantity, though, so people stick with it (pun intended).
If I were building a new home I'd either have it made in a modular factory or preferably, build a prefab LV - www.rocioromero.com.
there was a spate of building houses from wood in the 80's. That's about when those ones opposite went up. Maybe the codes were temporarily laxed?
If you mean what I think you mean there's some of those opposite my childhood home too, (almost exactly like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Builder's_tudorbethan.jpg )- I thought the wood on the exterior was cosmetic with brick/something else underneath the wood and render. I might of course be wrong.
As for the prefab, the type I was referring to was not for 'project' type council houses. This was for individual custom house builds. You wouldn't know it was a prefab build by looking at it. It just happened to be on my bike ride to work near Munich so I was watching with interest. The main structure (ground floor sections, ground floor walls, 1st floor sections, 1st floor walls) went up in, I kid you not, 2 days. I watched my wood-framed house in Canada being built and although I had the same 'fook me that was quick' feeling once the main framing started, it was by no means even comparable to the speed the prefab one in Munich went up. These are just my observations.
I heard before that pre-fab was popular in mainland Europe. Probably the extensive use for council housing in the UK created a stigma for pre-fab that still exists here (along with render and almost anything not visibly brick).
Thinking about it, all of the buildings I can think of that have exposed wood like that mentioned above also have a lot of exposed brick as well, probably as 'reassurance' to buyers- "yes, it is brick-built". Even industrial or big retail buildings here that are obviously steel framed and clad have exterior brickwork up to the first floor level. I guess Brits 'like' and insist on brick.
Since you mentioned codes, I believe that the current UK codes do allow wood framed buildings, where I live now is genuinely part timber framed (its a strange building and too long a story for here). I would suggest that the enduring lack of new timber or prefab housing in the UK is a quirk of the national housing market, rather than any technical or regulatory reason.
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Correct. When you look at a wood structure failing (like in the video), you do not see wood being ripped apart or anything like that. What you see is that big structures are separated from each other. The structures remain intact (at least until they fly into something else). The problem is how the structures are fastened to each other (ie wall to floor and roof). Strapping the roof to the walls with metal instead of just using nails makes a big difference.
When wood structures fail in a hurricane, it is usually not the building materials that failed. The problem with many houses is that they are made up of a roof sitting on top of walls sitting on a floor. The individual roof, walls, and floors are pretty strong. The problem is how they are fastened together. For instance, in the video in the article, you see that bottom of the front wall is pushed in to the house. The wall itself stays intact. Then the whole house basically just slides off the foundation. It is also not uncommon to see an entire roof structure come off a house as a single unit. And that is why labs like this one are important - they allow testing of techniques used to hold things together. You'll notice that the second house in the video was also made of wood, and did not come apart.
http://www.cement.org/homes/brief09.asp
According to the cement site, materials cost seem to not be that much more. Labor cost is almost double for normal concrete construction, but the pre-fab modular homes are not that much more. It seems quite feasable to shell out a bit more just so the home doesn't blow away each year. Why won't they do it in the hurricane and tornado prone areas?
When you add in insulation costs, it seems closer in price: http://www.cement.org/homes/ch_sb_solidinvest.asp
Since it's a cement site that did their own study, I doubt that it's that cheap. Even if it was 25% more, it's still a reasonable investment in hurricane & tornado zones. Something seems amiss in the mainland US mindset. It's probably why there's so many low quality Made in China junk in Walmart. I'd rather get something higher, quality and not have it break frequently.
Sure wood is definitely cheaper short term, but look at it long term. How often do you have to replace them each year. If the insurance companies were smart, they'd analyze the cost of concrete for those areas and the amount they'd pay long term. They already know the short term costs of constantly replacing homes during a hurricane. Maybe they have analyzed it and just make so much more short term money with the wooden structures and allowing the devastation and loss of life, that they wish to continue.
On the island of Guam, they get both 8.0+ earthquakes and up to Category 5 Typhoons(Hurricanes for non-US mainland pacific). After SuperTyphoon Pamela hit in 1976, homes were replaced with concrete. By the early 1980s they were pretty much all concrete. New homes there are all concrete and each new generation of new construction has better and easier to operate earthquake shutters. The buildings survive typhoons and earthquakes with minor, mostly cosmetic damage these days. No evacuations are required anymore. Everyone just rides out the typhoon in their homes. Granted, both wood and concrete have to be shipped to the island, but the heavier cement & gravel for concrete would still be a quite a bit more expensive to ship.
To make a concrete house look new, you just need to paint it and fix up the landscaping. I really don't see people tear down their house just to make it look new. For the internal walls, you can still use wood and reconfigure them quite easily. Only the exterior and load bearing interior structure has to be concrete. It's probably better, since some DIYer goof won't accidentally remove a load bearing wall and bring his own house down. The excuse for building with wood is just that, an excuse. There's lots of solidly built buildings that don't look old.
Also, after watching the video a few times, I think that the "normal" house was built in such a way to almost guarantee that it would fail catastrophically. There was no electrical wiring or plumbing, which while not being something that we rely on to be structural, would have held changed how the building collapsed. But most importantly, the interior of the house seems to have been completely devoid of gyp. board. Gyp. board serves as more than just a versatile wall covering, it also provides structural support, by creating diaphragms that help the structure against wracking. Often times, especially in hurricane areas, a structural engineer will take this further, by designating certain walls as shear walls, which have a layer of plywood under the gyp. board to provide an even stronger diaphragm.
Strapping is also a big deal, tying the building together vertically, although if the sheathing is laid out carefully and with the correct nailing pattern, it can do a lot of that work for you. I've seen some houses where there was giant threaded rods, maybe 3/4" diameter, and they ran the full height of the building, fastened at the bottom of the structure all the way up to the top plate of the second floor walls, one rod near each corner of the house. The contractors hated them, because they had to drill holes for it all the way down through the building, and inevitably there would be some plumbing or something in the way.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Grew up in Florida, in a house from the late 60's. Never had any real damage other than losing a fair number of asphalt shingles on year 24 or a 30 year roof, back in '04. But it was a concrete block house, not OSB over wood.
Here in NM, I wanted to build a rammed earth house but the county permit requirements were so steep and demanding (even using bonded rammed earth contractors from next county over), ended up going with OSB over wood. Now that we're in the house, it's no problem to go and build rammed earth walls up against exterior walls and the permitting folks can go screw themselves!
I drank what? -- Socrates
Also, at least in Tampa Bay area, just about all the brick buildings in the area had bricks shipped in from Georgia. There's very little clay available over most of Florida. Insulated Concrete Forms would be the way to go but the cost of concrete has been going up much faster than other building materials, as China expands it's infrastructure.
I drank what? -- Socrates
I would love to see them test a dome home. They are supposed to withstand hurricane and tornado conditions. They are about the same cost to build (or so I have heard and read.)
Working with Habitat for Humanity, we can frame an entire 1400 sq foot house in a day. We can get the roof rafters up in another day. Third day gets sheathing up on walls and roof. Is something to see what 10-20 guys can do in a few days.
When our house was built, our contractor brought in a husband/wife team for the framing. They had the entire two story house framed in three weeks, all by themselves, except for a crane crew for the roof trusses.
I drank what? -- Socrates
the Weather Channel sends it's reporters into this thing to practice their in-storm broadcasts. And to test their toupees.
There used to be an F6 rating. The Fujita scale originally went from F0 to F12 but everything over F5 was purely hypothetical; F5 itself meant maximum possible destruction so they just cut it off there.
Further reading if you're interested. Personally, I find it fascinating.
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
You know, not all pre-fab modular structures are concrete. They come in steel or wood, too.
I didn't know this. The ones I saw were prefab concrete.
:)
I happen to *know* that the prefab concrete parts only come in concrete
>"give the insurers the ability to carefully videotape"
If they're spending $100k per simulation, I would hope they could afford to upgrade to digital solutions.
Umm... not to devalue their achievement, but The University of Western Ontario's already got one of those: http://communications.uwo.ca/com/western_news/stories/'3_little_pigs'_facility_eager_to_blow_the_house_down_20051021434073/ It's been operational for several years now.
the Brickish Empire
Cryonics - Keep cool and carry on.
Here we go again. We locals seem to have this argument a lot lately ;)
We're talking very separate regions, because the Bronx was affected by a different tornado that day too.
I'm just surprised there's no technology in New York to accurately detect tornados in advance. Kansas tornado chasers have advance warning, while NYC had to wait days after this storm before authorities even confirmed a tornado really hit. It's an outrage --how does Kansas ever manage?
It's not just that crummy Statue of Liberty 20 miles south that'll get blown up like in the movies. We aint safe anywhere
Here we go again. We locals seem to have this argument a lot lately ;)
We're talking very separate regions, because the Bronx was affected by a different tornado that day too. It's not just the boring Statue of Liberty 20 miles south that'll get blown up like in the movies. We aint safe anywhere
I'm just surprised there's no technology in New York to accurately detect tornados in advance. Kansas tornado chasers have advance warning and detailed satellite tracking, while NYC had to wait days after this storm before authorities even confirmed a tornado really hit. How does Kansas ever manage?
Here we go again. We locals seem to have this argument a lot lately ;)
We're talking very separate regions. The Bronx was confirmed to be affected by a different tornado that day. It's not just the boring Statue of Liberty 20 miles south that'll get blown up like in the movies. We aint safe anywhere.
I'm just surprised there's no technology in New York to accurately detect tornados. Tornado chasers have advance warning and detailed satellite tracking, while NYC had to wait days after this storm before authorities even confirmed a tornado really hit. How does Kansas ever manage?!