Full-scale Laboratory Studies of Wind Effects on Buildings - A Pathyway to more Realistic Test Standards

Tim Reinhold
Senior Vice President of Research and Chief Engineer, IBHS

Thursday, January 31, 2013
3:30pm - 4:45pm
129 Debartolo

Dr. Reinhold will review the design and construction of the full-scale wind tunnel at the Insurance Institute for Business & Home safety Research Center. He will discuss the design decisions taken to assure that a variety of hazards that involve some wind component could be modeled in the laboratory. Validation studies and additional full-scale field data needs will be described. Research activities and key uses of the facility will be presented through a series of demonstrations and research projects that have already been completed. Results obtained from tests to investigate wind loads on individual layers of multi-layer walls will be used to demonstrate the importance of this type of facility and its power to shake up currently accepted test standards.

Tim Reinhold joined the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety in 2004, as Director of Engineering and Vice President. He was promoted to Senior Vice President of Research and Chief Engineer in 2008. Prior to joining IBHS, Dr. Reinhold was a professor of Civil Engineering at Clemson University for 12 years. His professional career includes ten years as a consulting engineer with firms in the U.S., Canada and Denmark, and five years at the National Institute for Standards and Technology. He earned BS, MS and Ph.D. degrees in Engineering Mechanics from Virginia Tech in 1973, 1975 and 1978, respectively. Dr. Reinhold has conduced research on wind effects and structural resistance for most of his professional career. In addition to directing numerous studies to determine wind loads for tall buildings and specialty structures, he has been heavily involved in research relating to the performance of housing and low buildings in hurricanes and other severe wind events. His research includes post event assessments, model and full-scale laboratory studies, and in situ field structural testing. Dr. Reinhold serves on the American Society of Civil Engineers ASCE 7 Committee, the ASCE 7 Wind Loads Subcommittee and the ASCE 7 General Requirements Subcommittee. He also served for about eight years on the Southern Building Code Congress International (SBCCI) Wind Load subcommittee and is currently a member of the Board of Directors for the American Association for Wind Engineering. He has authored or co-authored numerous journal papers, chapters of books and conference publications.