Contact: Phil Hearn
STARKVILLE, Miss.--A Mississippi State engineering professor is using giant magnets to simulate the uplift impact of hurricane-force winds on flat roofs and hopes his research findings will help guide rebuilding efforts along the storm-crushed Gulf Coast.
Veteran civil engineering professor Ralph Sinno is completing a report titled "Guidelines and Performance Specifications for Reconstruction of the Mississippi Gulf Coast." When completed in early December, it will be distributed as a white paper to state and local officials.
"We want to provide information to building code authorities that will allow them to modify, create and design new buildings that will be stronger," said the wind-load expert, who completed his undergraduate work at the University of Florida.
"We're looking at how buildings should be reconstructed, where shelters should be placed and how to revitalize the Gulf Coast, from Hattiesburg all the way to the seashore," explained Sinno, who is assisted in the project by 15 of his senior students.
Working over the past 11 years with the aid of some $600,000 in research funding, Sinno has developed an innovative electromagnetic testing system to investigate hurricane-level uplift wind forces on roofs. Previously, such tests were conducted only in wind tunnels with 1:50 scaled models.
"What we're doing at MSU is real-life, real-size, full-scale testing," said Sinno, a Lebanon native who earned a doctorate in civil engineering from Texas A&M University in 1968. "Simulation in time and space of high-velocity wind forces on full-scale roofs has never been done before anywhere in the world."
The professor conducts his tests in the uniform pressure testing chamber of the Kelly Gene Cook Sr. Wind Testing Laboratory at MSU's Walker Engineering Building. Thirty-four, three-phase magnetic nodal points suspended over a thin-gauged metal roof generate and duplicate the uplift suction forces.
"Dr. Sinno has developed unique equipment for applying wind loads to building elements," said Tom White, head of MSU's civil engineering department, a part of the Bagley College of Engineering. "There is no similar testing capability in the world."
Each magnet weighs approximately 300 pounds and requires up to four kilowatts of electric power. Using individual control boards developed by faculty colleague Bert Nail, a professor emeritus of electrical and computer engineering, the weights are computer-activated to vary the wind-load pulls in tenths of a second.
"To date, uplift hurricane forces up to 160 miles per hour have been successfully simulated and correlated in time and space," said Sinno. "Full-size roofs measuring 10-by-21-feet are used in the testing.
"We can now duplicate any hurricane," he added. "So far, we have duplicated Hurricane Andrew (the Category 5 storm that struck Florida in 1992). If you give me the footprints of Katrina (which demolished the Mississippi Gulf Coast Aug. 29), we can duplicate that one."
"Mississippi was dealt a devastating blow by Hurricane Katrina," observed engineering dean Kirk Schulz. "Ralph's research is helping ensure less damage to facilities of this type when severe weather strikes again."
Sinno said the results of some 12-14 tests over the past two years--duplicating wind-tunnel tests "100 percent within the acceptable standards of accuracy"--will be provided to the sponsoring Metal Building Manufacturers Association for use by the industry.
Other sponsors of Sinno's research include the American Iron and Steel Institute, the Metal Construction Association and FM Global, an international insurer of commercial and industrial properties. The wind tunnel data were provided by the University of Western Ontario (Canada).
After initially joining the MSU faculty as a nine-month employee in 1968, Sinno spent his summers working for General Electric at the NASA Test Facility (now Stennis Space Center) in Hancock County. His coast residence at the Penthouse Apartments in Pass Christian was demolished by Hurricane Camille in August 1969.
Although the young engineer and his wife evacuated their home before Camille hit, a friend, colleague and condo neighbor, Ed Wagner, died in the Category 5 storm.
"The next morning, there was nothing there but a concrete slab," Sinno remembered. "They found the bodies of Ed and his dog up in a tree."
He said he was shocked and disappointed that the condo complex was rebuilt on the same site, "exactly as it was before," with no structural improvements to mitigate the impact of future hurricanes. As a result, the complex again was swept away by Hurricane Katrina.
In the mid 1980s, Sinno said he began focusing his research on wind loads to help improve roof construction, particularly in storm-prone areas like the Mississippi coast.
"I began looking at what I could do about hurricanes," he said. "I made up my mind that I would devote the rest of my life to Ed Wagner and see what I could do."
NEWS EDITORS/DIRECTORS: For more information, contact Dr. Sinno at (662) 325-3737 or sinno@engr.msstate.edu.