Monitoring Structural Response of a Wooden Light-Frame Industrial Shed Building to Environmental Loads

Light-frame wooden buildings are highly complex and redundant structural systems that behave as assemblies of folded and interlocked rib-stiffened plate systems. This paper describes structural monitoring experiments on one such structure. A single storey industrial shed building located in Québec City, Canada, was monitored to determine its displacement response to wind and snow loads. Displacements were correlated with real-time estimates of these environmental loads. Observations encompassed deformations of a continuous strip of the wall and roof. Artificial (static) distributed and point loads were also applied to the structure to enhance understanding of how structural components interact. Limited finite element analysis was conducted for the rib stiffened roof system and the overall assembly, with agreement between predicted deformations and those observed under environmental or artificial loads. Measured response under snow loads confirmed theoretical expectations that composite action and load sharing are important mechanisms for light-frame buildings. The general trends for the main wind effects with steady wind direction were set, but simplified pressure coefficients had to be used for this study. A more detailed description of the wind load is needed, which can be obtained with measurements of the pressure distribution on the envelope of the building in full scale, supplemented with a wind-tunnel study. This project proved the feasibility of real-time monitoring and was the precursor for a larger monitoring project currently in progress at the University of New Brunswick.