Avilés-Nieves, Daniel

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    On improving the performance of wood-zinc roof systems
    (2006) Avilés-Nieves, Daniel; Saffar, Ali; College of Engineering; Ramos, Ricardo; López, Ricardo R.; Guevara, José O.; Department of Civil Engineering; Pabón-Ortiz, Carlos U.
    From hurricane Hugo to hurricane Georges, the majority of storm related losses in Puerto Rico were attributed to wood-zinc houses and auxiliary structures. Efforts to improve the performance of such systems is therefore of utmost importance. Based on the past experience, there is considerable evidence that the results from static load tests cannot adequately predict the behavior of wood-zinc roof systems. To measure the resistance, it is not only important to know the magnitude of the failure load but also the failure mechanism of the structure. The dynamic nature of the hurricane loading and the resulting uplift must be investigated in order to achieve this goal. Full scale laboratory testing schedules were developed to study the effects of uplift wind loading on wood-zinc roof systems. The existing construction methods for building these roofs were examined as well as different methods of connecting them to supporting beams and wall structures. It was an underlying objective of this work to improve and streamline the design requirements for wood-zinc roof systems. This was achieved by introduction of zinc-strap retrofitting scheme which showed tremendous potential for preventing fatigue type failure in zinc sheets. The use of zinc-straps in combination with metal reinforcements at wood connections should alleviate problems with this type of construction. Three variations on the basic zinc-strap retrofit were examined, improving the performance over the non-retrofitted systems by more than five hundred percent.