Storm duration effects on roof-to-wall-connection failures of a residential, wood-frame, gable roof

This paper investigates the storm duration effects on roof-to-wall-connection failures of a wood-framed, residential structure using a combined load sharing, nail-slip model. A model of the roof structure, idealized as an equivalent 2-D beam for the vertical load path under wind-induced uplift, is used in combination with piecewise-linear load–displacement curves for the roof-to-wall-connections. The model was validated against experimental data for a system of interconnected roof-to-wall-connections subjected to fluctuating wind loads. The validated model, subjected to fluctuating wind loads obtained from design storms of different durations along with the stochastically sampled connection parameters established from experiments, was used to estimate the probability of roof failures of a gable roof building. It was found that for “design-level” storms with high winds over durations of 1–5 h, the probability of failure was increased by 15% for the longer storm, even though the peak pressures were held constant for these storms.