Assessing elevated home slab retrofitting method for residential coastal buildings under hurricane loads

Abstract

With an increase in the frequency and intensity of hurricanes in the United States, effective mitigation solutions should be considered by individuals and governments. This paper investigates the slab elevation retrofit method as a mitigation strategy for residential timber buildings to reduce structural damage and associated economic losses due to hurricane loads. More specifically, a holistic assessment was performed to compare the structural response for typical coastal residential buildings with and without slab elevation incorporated and assess the impact of this retrofitting scheme on the overall building performance. A detailed finite element model was generated for a typical archetype and was used to conduct dynamic analyses for various wind and flood load conditions. The results of the progressive failure analyses were then used to perform loss assessments based on the methodology of the HAZUS hurricane manual. Based on the results of this study, when implementing the slab elevation retrofit method, the damage and associated economic losses due to hurricane-induced loads were reduced. It was observed for all analysis cases that damage due to flood loading dominated the response and economic losses. A noticeable reduction in the recovery time (in days) was also obtained for the considered elevated structures.