The response of a wood-frame, gable roof to fluctuating wind loads

Damage surveys following severe wind storms have shown that the roofs of residential, wood-frame buildings are particularly vulnerable to failures. While damage surveys can provide detailed information of what components fail, they cannot provide the loads at which these failures occurred or how they initiated. Wind tunnel pressure models provide detailed information of the wind loads on buildings, however, they are not able to predict failures or how these loads are transferred through the structure. In order to better understand the response of wood framed houses when subjected to high wind loads, realistic fluctuating wind loads were applied to a full scale two-story wood frame house. The tests performed on the roof of the house showed that the uplift capacity of the roof is significantly higher than that predicted using the individual connection results and is attributed to significant load sharing between adjacent connections. Since toe–nailed, roof-to-wall connections are partially withdrawn during peak wind gusts, how the loads are transferred through the structural system, to the connections, changes as the connections become increasingly damaged.

► The response of a full-scale wood frame house to realistic wind loads was tested.
► Toe–nail connections are found to fail incrementally during peak gusts.
► Incremental damage alters how loads are transferred through the structure.
► The structural capacity of the house was larger than expected.