Fragility Assessment for Cladding of Industrial Buildings Subjected to Extreme Wind

This paper presents a fragility assessment for the cladding in steel-framed constructions built in extreme wind speed regions. A fragility assessment methodology is developed to assess the performance of sandwich wall/roof panels and openings subjected to wind-induced building pressures. The majority of industrial buildings in Korea are of steel-framed construction. A review of the performance of industrial buildings after recent typhoons Maemi, Kompasu and Bolaven has shown that most of wind damage originated in the building envelope. The goal of this study is to develop a fragility model for building cladding, using available resistance test data, developed wind load statistics, and a recent building code. Six baseline structures considering different roof shapes, building sizes and geographic locations were investigated using a fully probabilistic Monte Carlo simulation engine. The fragilities of each baseline building considering four different levels of damage were developed as a function of a 3-second gust wind speed. The fragility assessment methodology described in this paper can be used to measure the performances of industrial buildings in extreme wind speed regions, as well as to provide information for risk and loss assessments.