A Performance-Based Wind Engineering Framework for Envelope Systems of Engineered Buildings Subject to Directional Wind and Rain Hazards

Abstract

The adoption of performance-based wind engineering (PBWE) is rapidly becoming recognized as a fundamental step to reducing the huge economic losses caused by severe windstorms. This has led to the recent introduction of a number of PBWE frameworks for the assessment of engineered building systems such as high-rise structures. Although these frameworks have resulted in significant progress toward the efficient and effective estimation of performance within a PBWE setting, there is still a significant lack of frameworks that can holistically model the performance of the envelope system of engineered buildings. Recognizing how accurate prediction of losses occurring during severe windstorms, such as hurricanes, cannot be made without detailed modeling of the losses caused by damage to the envelope system, this paper introduces a new PBWE framework that is focused on the performance assessment of the envelope system. The proposed framework is based on integrating a recently proposed building envelope damage model into a conditional stochastic simulation framework in which the directional wind and concurrent rain hazard is explicitly modeled together with the stochastic nature of the local wind pressure. By incorporating loss models, performance estimates are provided in terms of annual exceedance rates of system-level metrics such as repair costs. A full-scale building example is presented to illustrate the practicality of the proposed PBWE framework.