A Performance-Based Wind Engineering Framework for Engineered Building Systems Subject to Hurricanes

Abstract

Over the past decade, significant research efforts have been dedicated to the development of performance-based wind engineering (PBWE). Notwithstanding these efforts, frameworks that integrate the damage assessment of the structural and envelope system are still lacking. In response to this need, the authors have recently proposed a PBWE framework that holistically treats envelope and structural damages through progressive multi-demand fragility models that capture the inherent coupling in the demands and damages. Similar to other PBWE methodologies, this framework is based on describing the hurricane hazard through a nominal straight and stationary wind event with constant rainfall and one-hour duration. This study aims to develop a PBWE framework based on a full description of the hurricane hazard in which the entire evolution of the storm track and time-dependent wind/rain fields is simulated. Hurricane-induced pressures impacting the building envelope are captured through the introduction of a non-stationary/-straight/-Gaussian wind pressure model. Time-dependent wind-driven rain is modeled through a computational fluid dynamics Eulerian multiphase framework with interpolation schemes for the rapid computation of wind-driven rain intensities over the building surface. Through the development of a conditional stochastic simulation algorithm, the envelope performance is efficiently characterized through probabilistic metrics associated with rare events of design interest. The framework is demonstrated through analyzing a 45-story archetype building located in Miami, FL, for which the envelope performance is estimated in terms of a suite of probabilistic damage and loss metrics. A comparative study is carried out in order to provide insights into the differences that can occur due to the use of nominal hurricane models.