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 | | FAIRY TALE ENDING FOR GAST GROUP HURRICANE ORDER | | | Gast Group | | 12/08/2008 | | | The Gast Group has secured an order worth over £150,000 to supply a bespoke version of its Regenair Blower to the University of Western Ontario’s (UWO) $7 million research laboratory for a project that tests the integrity of low-rise buildings by recreating real-world wind simulations.
Known to many as the ‘Three Little Pigs’ project, the research laboratory is the first of its kind in the world capable of subjecting full-sized houses and low-rise buildings to the type of pressure loads experienced during category five hurricanes or 200 mph winds.
The project is being led in the UK by technology developer Cambridge Consultants, who have developed the pressure load simulators. These consist of high-performance actuators that can be controlled in real time to apply positive and negative pressures over a +5 to -20 kilopascals range (5 kilopascals equates to an approximate weight of 500kg per square metre of roof).
Each pressure load simulator module, of which over 100 will be manufactured, also features a sophisticated control and networking system that allows the complex time and spatially varying wind effects experienced in the real world to be realistically applied.
The simulators also include a fast-acting valve system that enables the air flow to reverse direction up to 7 times per second, which means the facility can reproduce the rapidly changing sucking and blowing wind loads that are so destructive to roof structures.
Greg Kopp, the UWO’s Civil & Environmental Engineering professor and Canada Research Chair in Wind Engineering, explains that the project will enable researchers to assess the structural integrity of houses by studying the pathways through which loads from wind, water and snow are transferred. They will then also be able to analyse the performance of specific building components as a part of the whole construction. "Many things that make a house safer are hidden beneath the external finishes, like siding and molding, and sometimes, a simple solution is all that is required." He says.
“Research from the Three Little Pigs project will make houses and low-rise buildings safer and more cost-effective in the face of storms, and will lead to the development of ways to retrofit existing homes and reduce errors during construction." says Greg.
Commenting for Cambridge Consultants, project manager Gary Kemp says: “We brought together a multi-disciplined project team for 18 months to design this complex system, with skills in fluid dynamics, electrical and mechanical design, manufacturing, closed-loop control algorithms and synchronisation of units across a high-speed network. We worked closely with the University throughout the programme to develop the system specifications to their needs and to ensure that the design could be transferred to manufacture in Canada. The successful commissioning of the system enables the University to do new work in building safety and survivability which will help to reduce the devastating losses caused by natural disasters.”
Each Gast Regenair Blower is connected to a bespoke valve designed by Cambridge Consultants, which allows it to be used for both pressure and vacuum air-flows in the same installation, whilst being able to reverse the airflow direction in a fraction of a second and control the varying air pressure continually.
As a result, buffeting of the airflow can be controlled at the push of a button, recreating high-pressure winds on one elevation of a structure and low-pressure on the opposing elevation.
Commenting for the Gast Group, managing director Adrian Lee explains that a detailed proposal and full specification for the Regenair’s airflows, pressures and motor powers were made available to Cambridge Consultants, supported by a technical presentation that included on-site installation methods.
Phase one of the project involved testing the Regenair Blower under working conditions on a test-rig constructed by Cambridge Consultants. The first blower tested performed as expected; however it was decided to test a larger blower, which was eventually adopted in order to give more flexibility in the test system configuration.
When all testing was completed, a formal tender for over ninety Regenair Blower units was issued, all of which were delivered within ten days from Gast’s plant in Michigan, USA.
“The ultimate winners in this project will be the people that are saved by buildings that are designed to withstand the increasingly regular hurricane-force winds that are experienced around the world.” says Adrian Lee. | |
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