RAPID: Fundamental Behavior of Manufactured Homes under Windstorms through Full-scale Experimentation and Numerical Modeling

Manufactured homes are fundamentally different from other building types due to their configuration, installation, and size and weight constraints required to maintain transportability and affordability. Both recent and historical post-disaster reconnaissance have documented their poor performance under strong wind events. Despite the widespread use of manufactured homes, modern engineering research on their structural behavior remains limited. This Grant for Rapid Response Research (RAPID) seeks to address fundamental knowledge gaps on manufactured home performance under hurricane level winds. The outcomes from this research can improve the welfare, safety and protection of more than 20 million residents of manufactured homes across the United States. This project has a time-sensitive urgency to move three manufactured homes, to the Florida International University campus, that will be used as specimens for full-scale testing under wind loads, while the team still has access to these units. Findings from the full-scale testing will inform and validate retrofit strategies and design improvements for new manufactured homes, enhancing their resilience to future hurricanes and windstorms. The research team will disseminate results to technical and scientific communities through peer-reviewed publications, data releases, and conference presentations, thereby promoting continued research and informing updates to design and installation codes. The project will also provide engineering students with valuable training in experimental testing, computational modeling, and data science. This award will contribute to the NSF role in the National Windstorm Impact Reduction Program (NWIRP). This project will generate critical data to quantify wind resistance and characterize wind performance of manufactured homes through examining the initiation, propagation, and accumulation of damage during full-scale wind tunnel testing at the Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) Wall of Wind Experimental Facility at Florida International University. These full-scale experiments are essential for validating finite element models, which will support broader analysis under varying wind conditions and structural configurations. Experiments and subsequent modeling will facilitate the development of optimized design and retrofit recommendations. Full-scale testing will bridge the current gap in understanding between component- and system-level behavior for manufactured homes. The experiments will include (1) moderate-level wind speed testing for wind field evaluation and wind pressure measurements on exterior walls, floor underside, and roof surfaces, and (2) high-speed testing to measure displacements and strains, while capturing dynamic response, component performance, and progressive and accumulative damage through sensors and videography. Project data will be archived and made publicly available in the NHERI Data Depot at https://www.DesignSafe-ci.org. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.