Journal of Architectural Engineering

Lessons learned from failures of the building envelope in windstorms are encapsulated in three principal findings. The building envelope is crucial to the performance of buildings in windstorms. Windborne debris is decisive in shaping the performance of the building envelope. Design attention should be given to postimpact behavior of building-envelope systems. Reviews of damage documentation, insurance records, and computer simulations of building failures establish the importance of the building envelope to satisfactory building performance. These reviews also establish the decisive role of windborne debris in causing damage. The imperative for considering the postimpact behavior of building envelope systems is discussed, and innovative glazing products that meet new design criteria are presented. It is concluded that the building envelope should be given status equal to the principal structural frame in terms of design attention.

Excessive floor vibration due to walking is an important serviceability condition to be considered in building design. This paper presents several case studies of problem floors. The case studies include complaints about office, classroom, and retail spaces where vibration levels were found disturbing. In each of these cases, the cause of the vibration was due to people walking around the space. These case studies are presented to reinforce the existence of this problem, to describe nonstructural factors that affect the behavior of floors, and to provide new data to the design and research communities.

 This paper presents a method for the field measurement of airtightness for two- and three-unit buildings using only one fan pressurization system, commonly referred to as a blower door. The main advantage of this single-fan method is its lower equipment and labor cost as compared with multiple-fan methods. Results from consecutive tests in the individual units are used to prepare a set of simultaneous equations for airflow, allowing for the calculation of the air leakage characteristics of both the interior partitions and the exterior envelope on a unit-per-unit basis. Tests were performed on four buildings using the single-fan method and were compared with those obtained with a two-fan method. Test results indicate that the single-fan method may be of value as an inexpensive method of estimating the airtightness of two- and three-unit residential buildings.

This paper presents exploratory research work in facility layout design of a manufactured housing production plant. Manufactured homes are built in a factory on an assembly line that consists of activity stations, subactivity stations, feeder stations, and storage areas. This research developed systematic process steps for the layout design of manufactured housing production plants with a qualitative approach. The qualitative approach takes into account space requirements and proximity parameters. For this purpose, the tools and techniques available in industrial and manufacturing engineering were investigated. Data related to the space and proximity requirements in the two case study production plants were collected, and alternative layouts were developed. These layouts were analyzed to suggest the best possible layout. Finally, layout design steps for the qualitative analysis of the facility design were presented in the form of a process flowchart.

A large amount of combustibles are stored in small newspapers and magazine shops in terminal halls known as news agents in the Far East. Fire safety for those small shops located in crowded public transport interchanges should be evaluated carefully. In carrying out fire hazard assessment, the possible heat release rates should be estimated so that consequences of a fire can be assessed. As the shops are small with easily ignited combustibles, transition to a postflashover fire would be rapid. Therefore, the resultant heat release rates should be measured by burning those combustibles under flashover conditions. Hazard assessments based on full-scale burning tests for postflashover news agent fires performed in remote areas in China are reported in this paper. The effect of reducing the heat release rate by discharging water mists is illustrated. Such fire suppression systems are recommended for use in such shops.