Wind pressure testing of tornado safe room components made from wood

Abstract

To evaluate the ability of a wood tornado safe room to resist wind pressures produced by a tornado, two safe room com-ponents were tested for wind pressure strength. A tornado safe room ceiling panel and door were static-pressure-tested according to ASTM E 330 using a vacuum test system. Re-sults indicate that the panels had load capacities from 2.4 to 3.5 times that required by the wind pressure calculations of ASCE 7. The panels sustained no damage at these elevated load levels.

Citation

Falk; Robert H.; Shrestha; Deepak. 2016. Wind pressure testing of tornado safe room components made from wood. Research Paper FPL-RP-688. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory. 6 p.