PFI-TT: An artificial intelligence system for prediction of wind hazards in civil engineering applications

这一创新-技术转化伙伴关系(PFI-TT)项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力是创造技术，利用基于性能的设计来减少极端风暴(如飓风)对建筑物和其他结构造成的破坏所造成的巨大经济损失和社会破坏。基于性能的设计代表了一种范式的转变，工程界认为这是该职业的未来。为了加速这一针对易受极端风暴影响的建筑的根本性转变，该项目将利用非弹性动力系统计算建模和不确定性传播方面的最新突破，为实施基于性能的风设计创造一项同类技术，从而产生明确确保(1)增强建筑和其他结构对未来风暴的弹性以及(2)利益相关者对成本效益的需求的工具。这将为土木工程和结构工程行业带来革命性的进步，为受极端风影响的建筑和其他结构的设计者提供一种在新工艺中实施先进的基于性能的风设计的手段。该项目还将培训一名博士后研究人员和本科生在土木工程技术方面的创新和创业精神。该项目将创建原型技术，通过明确评估所有危险强度下的建筑性能，进行基于性能的先进风力设计，同时通过可靠性系统地处理不确定性。该技术将首次为设计工程师提供一种有形的手段，通过动态安定和/或早期倒塌的极限状态来评估建筑物和其他结构在极端风作用下的系统级非弹性性能。这将使建筑系统能够评估由于棘轮、低周疲劳和/或瞬时塑性坍塌而导致的故障，对其进行评估被认为是以降低利益相关者的成本实现对极端风暴的更大弹性的关键。通过改进应力合成塑性和混合计算，不确定性传播方案将能够直接评估动态安定和初期坍塌性能目标的可靠性，这两个指标是高级基于性能的风设计的核心指标。为了使用户能够与该技术进行交互，将开发一个全面的面向对象的交互图形界面，该界面具有可扩展和可维护的特点，从而确保该项目的结果将远远持续到结论之后。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Partnerships for Innovation - Technology Translation (PFI-TT) project is the creation of technology for leveraging performance-based design to mitigate the massive economic loss and societal disruption caused by damage to buildings and other structures from extreme windstorms, e.g. hurricanes. Performance-based design represents a paradigm shift that is recognized by the engineering community as the future of the profession. To accelerate this fundamental shift for buildings subject to extreme windstorms, this project will create a first-of-its-kind technology for the implementation of performance-based wind design by leveraging recent breakthroughs in computational modeling of inelastic dynamic systems and uncertainty propagation, therefore resulting in tools that explicitly ensure (1) enhanced resilience of buildings and other structures to future windstorms and (2) the stakeholder need for cost effectiveness. This will create transformative advances on the profession of civil and structural engineering through arming the designers of buildings and other structures subject to extreme winds with a means to implement advanced performance-based wind design in a new process. The project will also train a postdoctoral researcher and undergraduate students in innovation and entrepreneurship in civil engineering technology.This project will create prototype technology for carrying out advanced performance-based wind design through the explicit evaluation of building performance at all hazard intensities, including at ultimate load levels where significant damage is expected, while systematically treating uncertainty through reliability. The technology will provide, for the first time, a tangible means for design engineers to evaluate the system-level inelastic performance of buildings and other structures subject to extreme winds through the limit states of dynamic shakedown and/or incipient collapse. This will enable the assessment of building systems against failure due to ratcheting, low cycle fatigue, and/or instantaneous plastic collapse, the evaluation of which is recognized as key to achieving greater resilience against extreme windstorms at reduced costs to stakeholders. By advancing stress resultant plasticity and hybrid computing, uncertainty propagation schemes will enable direct evaluation of reliability at the performance objectives of dynamic shakedown and incipient collapse, metrics at the very core of advanced performance-based wind design. To enable user interaction with the technology, a comprehensive object-oriented interactive graphics interface will be developed that possesses extensible and maintainable characteristics, therefore ensuring the results of this project will endure well beyond its conclusion.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.