NSF Award
2330150
This Mid-scale Research Infrastructure-1 award will support the design phase for a university-based National Testing Facility for Enhancing Wind Resiliency of Infrastructure in Tornado-Downburst-Gust Front Events (NEWRITE). The design of NEWRITE will consider realistic wind fields (speeds up to 225 miles per hour (mph)) in non-synoptic windstorm (NSW) events (tornado/downburst/gust-front) to enable physical testing of their loading and damaging effects on civil infrastructure at mid-to-full model scales (1:10 to 1:1). These weather events cause considerable property damage and numerous fatalities annually in the United States. Damage to infrastructure will only increase with growing urbanization and increased intensification and frequency of such windstorms due to the changing climate. As evidenced in the past, major tornadoes with an intensity of Enhanced Fujita 3 (EF3) or greater (136 mph or greater, 3-second gust) have struck large population centers, causing multiple fatalities and significant damage to residential and engineered structures. Property damage from downbursts and gust fronts are equally significant. NEWRITE will be designed to be a state-of-the-art research and testing platform to mitigate the impacts of NSW hazards on the built environment and significantly reduce fatalities and economic losses. Iowa State University will lead this design project with participation from Clemson University, Missouri University of Science and Technology, Northeastern University, Texas Tech University, University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, University of Florida, University of Washington, and University of Wisconsin at Madison. This design project will be a component of the National Science Foundation (NSF)-supported Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) and will contribute to the NSF role in the National Windstorm Impact Reduction Program (NWIRP). Data produced during this design project will be archived and made publicly available in the NHERI Data Depot (https://www.DesignSafe-ci.org). <br/><br/>The design of NEWRITE will consider desired capabilities to generate wind fields associated with EF1 to EF5 tornadoes (86-225 mph), moderately intense downbursts (100-125 mph), and gust fronts (80-100 mph). NEWRITE will be designed to investigate NSW hazards on civil infrastructure at scales large enough to study near ground wind fields, wind loading, wind-borne debris impact, and structural damage mechanisms in NSW events. These design parameters would allow the wind engineering community to conduct research to understand the impact of wind and debris in NSW events on the built environment from individual structures to groups of structures at the community scale. The design of NEWRITE will consider capabilities to (a) advance the current knowledge of the transient characteristics of non-synoptic winds and the hazards they pose from the extreme wind and wind-borne debris, (b) advance the understanding of the mechanics of the wind structure and debris-structure interactions in NSW events, such as load distribution, load paths, and component stresses in structures, (c) enable better detection of NSW events on the ground through the integration of wind speed and ground pressure-sensors and radar data for improved warning, and (d) integrate experimental data with computational mechanics to improve structural modeling and damage prediction, enabling the development of resilient structures. The facility will be designed to physically simulate NSW hazards at mid-to-full model-length scale and velocity scale required to faithfully reproduce the damaging effects of these hazards on civil infrastructure and assess potential solutions to enhance their wind resiliency through robust design. During this design project, a smaller scale (1:20) physical prototype of NEWRITE will be designed and constructed at Iowa State University and a digital twin of NEWRITE will be developed to assist with the full-scale NEWRITE design. While the outcome of this project will be final design documents for construction of the full-scale NEWRITE, this award is not a commitment to support the construction phase of the full-scale NEWRITE. This project is jointly funded by the Mid-scale Research Infrastructure-1 Program and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).<br/><br/>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.
