Overview
The Insurance Research Lab for Better Homes is a multi-million dollar state of the art research facility built to examine all aspects of house construction by performing novel experiments on extreme wind effects, moisture penetration, energy efficiency and mould growth.
The ultimate aim of our research is to improve construction techniques to make our communities more resilient to natural hazards and more energy efficient in the coming decades.
The Insurance Research Lab for Better Homes brings, for the first time anywhere, the application of realistically simulated time and spatially varying wind loads to full-scale houses and light-frame structures including sheet steel buildings, in a controlled manner, up to failure. This allows an assessment of the integrity of the overall structure of the building, the pathways by which the load is transmitted through the structure to the ground and the performance of individual building components as part of the whole construction. Information on human error during the construction process is collected and its impact on the potential damage and failure is analyzed.
The facility can be used to assess the factors influencing the ingress of moisture due to wind-driven rain and the development of harmful mould growth under realistic environmental conditions. Simulated snow loading can be investigated as well.
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The University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario, Canada, N6A 5B9 • Tel: 519-661-2128
Updated June 22, 2010 by contactWE
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