Elevated light-frame wood residential building physical and numerical modeling of damage due to hurricane overland surge and waves

An experimental program of a 1:6 scale elevated wood frame shear-wall residential building was developed to model the damage progression of buildings subjected to increasing hurricane surge depth and wave conditions until collapse. This paper presents testing and system identification methods used to characterize structural engineering properties of the physical model that accumulated damage during hydrodynamic testing under increasing surge depth and wave heights. Methods used include (a) quasi-static lateral load-deformation testing, (b) out-of-water dynamic structural characterization testing under free vibration, ambient vibration, and forced vibration, conducted on the test specimen prior to hydrodynamic testing, (c) in-water dynamic structural characterization during hydrodynamic testing, (d) quantification of accumulated damage in hydrodynamic testing through observed changes in the laser scan point cloud data of the specimen, and (e) finite element model updating. The accumulated damage in the test specimen is correlated to changes in modal features (frequency, damping, and mode shapes) assessed using two output-only system identification (SID) methods. In addition, finite volume numerical models are used to determine detailed pressure distributions on the test specimen which are coupled with finite element (FE) models that are updated, in a phased manner, to understand the contribution of structural and nonstructural components on the modeled stiffness and strength of the physical model. Lastly, the impact of the damage on the modal features of the physical model of the building and their sensitivity to FE model assumptions are presented.