Fragility curves for corrugated structural panel subjected to windborne debris impact

With the climate change, more and more extreme wind events such as cyclone take place around Australia and the world, which cause tremendous loss and damage. The wind speed has been reported constantly increasing with the climate change, which imposes more threats to building environments. The building envelopes are vulnerable to the windborne debris impact in a form of creating an opening in wall, roof, door, windows and screens, which leads to internal pressure increase and results in roof lifting up. The capacity requirements of wall or roof panels to resist windborne debris impact in cyclonic regions has been substantially increased in the 2011 Australian Wind Loading Code (AS/NZS 1170.2:2011) as compared to its previous version. The performance of commonly used structural panels in Australian Building Industry under the increased design wind speed needs be evaluated. Intensive laboratory tests and intensive numerical simulations on performances of typical structural panels subjected to windborne debris impacts have been carried out. This paper presents the results of one panel type, i.e., corrugated panel. The vulnerability curves of the corrugated panel with respect to the debris mass and impact speed are simulated. These results can be used in probabilistic loss estimations of structural panels in extreme wind events