Help is on the way for structural engineers driving toward improving the efficiency, reliability and resilience of buildings through performance-based wind design. And though it could take a decade or more for PBWD to become mainstream for practitioners, the authors of the first two PBWD documents, both debuting this year, are hailing them as milestones.
“PBWD provides the opportunity to engineer unique structural systems for buildings with atypical shapes or aerodynamic characteristics that do not fit the constraints of the prescriptive code-based wind-force resisting systems,” said Donald R. Scott, a senior principal at PCS Structural Solutions, at Structures Congress 2019. The conference, organized by the Structural Engineering Institute (SEI) of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and held April 24-27 in Orlando, drew 1,058 registrants.