Engineering Commons^™

The Northern Tornadoes Project - Uncovering Canada’S True Tornado Climatology, David Sills, Gregory A. Kopp, Aaron Jaffe, Elizabeth Sutherland, Connell Miller, Joanne Kunkel, Emilio Hong, Sarah Stevenson, William Wang

Civil and Environmental Engineering Publications

Canada is a vast country with most of its population located along its southern border. Large areas are sparsely populated and/or heavily forested, and severe weather reports are rare when thunderstorms occur there. Thus, it has been difficult to accurately assess the true tornado climatology and risk. It is also important to establish a reliable baseline for tornado-related climate change studies.

The Northern Tornadoes Project (NTP), led by Western University, is an ambitious multidisciplinary initiative aimed at detecting and documenting every tornado that occurs across Canada. A team of meteorologists and wind engineers collects research-quality data during each damage investigation, …

Internal Pressure Modelling For Low-Rise Buildings In Tornadic Winds, Aaron L. Jaffe

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Internal pressures play a large role in the failure of wood-frame houses as the loss of the entire roof section becomes much more likely once the envelope of the building has been breached. Many studies have used internal pressure modelling to simulate internal pressures in structures from atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) winds, however, relatively little work has been done on this subject using tornadic winds. The objective of this study is to explore internal pressure modelling issues for tornadoes. The first part of the study uses a computational internal pressure model to simulate tornadic internal pressures of a low-rise structure; …

Progressive Failure Of Transmission Line Towers Under Different Tornado Wind Fields, Wesam Abdelhamid Mohamed

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

High-intensity wind events (downbursts and tornadoes) cause the majority of weather-related transmission line (TL) failures, which detrimentally affect society. This study investigates the progressive failures of single TL towers and TL systems under different F2 tornadoes. Different tornado wind fields are incorporated in a fluid-structure software developed at Western University. Progressive failure analysis is then conducted for four towers under the most critical tornado configurations identified from extensive parametric studies. Moreover, the cost associated with designing TLs to sustain F2 tornadoes is investigated by strengthening the TL towers. Finally, the progressive failure within self-supported TL systems under different tornadoes, and …