Stability of Variously Shaped Buildings in Increasingly Strong Winds

Overview

Objectives/Goals People's homes get destroyed by tornados and hurricanes. I wanted to find out if buildings shaped like a dome or a pyramid stand up better to high winds than a normal rectangular house with a sloped roof. Methods/Materials I put each building on a concrete floor two meters from a fan. I pushed the fan closer to each building. I recorded how far the fan was from each building type when it was blown from its position. Results I found that the fan had to be closest to the dome building (26.8 cm) before it would move. When the wind hit the long side of the house-shaped building it was still far away (65.5 cm). When the wind hit the short side of the house-shaped building it was much closer before the building moved (45.7 cm). The pyramid moved when the fan was 43.1 cm away if a corner was facing the wind and 45.0 cm away if the flat side was facing the wind. I thought that the pyramid would be most easily moved. Conclusions/Discussion This experiment shows that the strongest winds are needed to move a building shaped like a dome. The weakest winds move a building shaped like a normal house especially if they hit the long side of the house. A pyramid stands up to winds better than a normal house but not as well as a dome. In the future I would also like to find out how easily buildings of different shapes would collapse in high winds.

Competition history

• CSEF 2013 Applied Mechanics & Structures · Entry J0397

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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