VULNERABILITY ASSESSMENT OF ROOF SHEATHING OF LOW-RISE BUILDINGS UNDER HURRICANE WINDS

The hurricane-induced economic loss to low-rise buildings is primarily attributed to the insufficient performance of building envelope instead of the catastrophic failure of their main structural system for Category 1 to 4 hurricanes. The vulnerability curves for a selected roof corner sheathing panel are developed by using a database assisted stochastic finite element modeling approach in this study. The proposed approach incorporates the surface wind pressure information directly from wind tunnel tests, accounts for load distributions rigorously according to the stiffness of all primary and secondary structural components, and considers the uncertainties in wind loads as well as material properties. The engineering based vulnerability curves are developed for the targeted seven individual structure performance criteria and their interplay. The obtained vulnerability curves (i.e., the expected mean damage ratio as a function of wind speeds) can be further converted to the loss ratio (i.e., the repair cost of the damage portion over the property value) against wind speed and be used to decide the premium within a reasonable marginal profit for the insurance industry.