7. Wind Loads on Building Components and Cladding

Building components and cladding are important to the overall performance of buildings during extreme windstorms. Failure of even relatively small components can lead to internal pressurization, which increases the overall net loads on other components, or to significant rain water infiltration, which increases losses. In this chapter, we focus on the nature of wind loads on low-rise buildings and test methods used to define the ultimate capacity of building products and components. Wind loads are shown to have significant spatial and temporal variations, which are greatly simplified in building codes and standard test methods. Most building codes specify component loads as single peak values that have only a few different values over the various building surfaces for a small range of buildings. Many building components have complex and redundant load paths; the chapter discusses how load sharing can be handled in such systems. The design of some building component and cladding systems depend on the storm duration and the numbers of load cycles, which is also discussed.