Wind-Induced Curtain Wall Damage and Moment Resisting Frame Performance: The Emergency Response, Stabilization, Analysis, Testing, and Retrofit of a 36-Story Urban High-Rise

On the evening of April 2, 2006 a severe wind storm passed through the downtown of a major Midwest urban municipality. This event resulted in distress to a 36 story high rise structure with approximately 10% of its curtain wall visibly missing and unknown damage to the balance of the building's cladding and structural systems. This paper will present the authors' involvement with the initial emergency response to the property where they immediately worked with contractors to stabilize the remaining curtain wall, designed and erected temporary enclosures and shoring systems, and began an assessment of damage. Moreover, the paper will discuss the 3-dimensional analytical model of the building's cladding and structural frame that was developed for the purpose of determining the extent of damage, in addition to the wind tunnel analysis, field instrumentation, tuned damper study and other analysis that provided critical data for the design of the curtain wall over clad to be installed at the building.