photo from As some scientists predict that hurricanes will grow stronger and more frequent over the next century, Greg Kopp, a researcher and civil engineering professor at the University of Western Ontario, is engineering a way to lessen their destructive impacts. Oftentimes, during a hurricane, the roof of the house is the first part of the house to fail. Their project, dubbed “Three Little Pigs”, aims to discover what is responsible for this, and to engineer a solution. To conduct their research, engineers constructed a steel hanger, containing a full scale house and pressure boxes capable of simulating the wind and turbulence effects of up to a Category 5 hurricane.
Preliminary tests yielded some unexpected results, such as the location of the roof’s initial failure. “The thing that surprised us most is [that] it failed on the leeward side of the house. We had all expected it to fail on the windward side first,” said Kopp, in an interview with CNN Now that they better understand the behavior of the house under stress, researchers will continue their project, focusing in on smaller details, and on how to prevent future failures.
I just stumbled on this blog while looking for something on the ASEE website. I plan to give this link to my first year engineering students and have them choose an entry to lean more about and write up a reflection.
Also, let me know if you’d like another story about our team that won the international IGVC (Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition) for this blog.
Finally, my blog (adventures of a techie nun) is probably more about being a nun than an engineering prof, but feel free to add it to your blogroll if you think others might be interested.