I-Corps: Software technology for performance-based wind design through dynamic shakedown

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the development of software tools for the performance-based wind design (PBWD) of a wide class of building systems subject to extreme winds. In 2020 alone, it is estimated that the United States was subject to 22 weather events that caused more than one billion dollars of losses. To increase the resilience of the built environment against extreme winds, there is interest from the engineering community to radically change how buildings are designed to resist extreme winds through the application that implement performance-based engineering.

The proposed technology may fill the unmet market need for software tools that provide the practicing civil/structural engineering community with a means to carry out PBWD of building systems. The software tools may create the design freedom necessary for innovation leading to reduced economic and societal losses during extreme weather events.

This I-Corps project is based on the development of software technologies for performance-based wind design (PBWD) of a wide class of structural systems through reliability-based dynamic shakedown. The technology is based on recent advances in the theory and probabilistic modeling of inelastic structural systems of wind excited buildings. These advances may enable, for the first time, the comprehensive inclusion of failure mechanisms associated with instantaneous plastic collapse, low-cycle fatigue, and ratcheting, which are fundamental for the characterization of the post-yield behavior of structural systems subject to weather events.

The computational efficiency and robustness of the resulting frameworks have allowed the introduction of a new class of software tools that have the potential to provide structure designers with practical means to achieve designs that meet the current and future needs for buildings with enhanced performance and greater sustainability at reduced cost.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.