Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure: Experimental Facility with Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel, Wind Load and Dynamic Flow Simulators, and Pressure Loading Actuators

自然灾害工程研究基础设施（NHERI）将得到美国国家科学基金会（NSF）的支持，作为一个分布式、多用户的国家设施，它将为自然灾害研究社区提供研究基础设施，包括地震和风力工程实验设施、网络基础设施、计算建模和模拟工具、研究数据，以及教育和社区外展活动。NHERI将由网络协调办公室、网络基础设施、计算建模和仿真中心以及实验设施（包括灾后快速反应研究设施）组成。NHERI获得的奖金将有助于NSF在国家减少地震灾害计划（NEHRP）和国家减少风暴影响计划中的作用。NHERI延续了NSF对地震工程研究基础设施的重视，此前，作为NEHRP的一部分，由小乔治·e·布朗地震工程模拟网络支持，但现在扩大了对风力工程研究基础设施的支持。NHERI的广泛目标是支持提高民用基础设施（如建筑物和其他结构、地下结构、堤坝和关键生命线）抵御地震和风暴自然灾害的弹性和可持续性的研究，以最大限度地减少生命损失、损害和经济损失。有关NHERI资源的信息将在DesignSafe-ci.org门户网站上提供。NHERI实验设施将为nsf支持的研究和教育奖励提供对其实验资源、用户服务和数据管理基础设施的访问。这个NHERI实验设施位于佛罗里达大学，广泛支持减轻极端风雨事件对民用基础设施影响的研究。该设施将为用户提供多样化的风工程实验资源，包括大气边界层风洞和专门的测试设备，可以复制龙卷风、雷暴和飓风的破坏性影响。这些实验资源将支持研究以了解民用基础设施对极端风暴事件的脆弱性，改进计算工具以预测民用基础设施的性能，并推进知识以改进建筑规范和标准。这项研究将有助于更广泛的弹性工作，以保护易发生灾害的社区免受极端天气的影响。该设施将举办年度用户研讨会，并将为本科生举办研究体验。与高性能计算（HPC）集群相结合，该设施将为用户提供实验和计算能力、人员配置、领域专业知识和端到端项目服务，以进行一系列风能工程研究。该设施的实验资源将使来自极端风（飓风和龙卷风）的动态载荷能够得到适当的表征，并应用于全尺寸组件和系统，其持续时间反映实际事件。该设施将提供一个灵活的框架，提供可重复性和可扩展性，并适应许多风灾场景和基础设施系统。该设施将包括五种实验资源。大气边界层风洞具有独特的自调谐气流控制系统，可显著提高可达气流的宽度。多轴风荷载模拟器可以在全尺寸样品（高达7米× 5米）上产生动态风压（高达辛普森飓风5级飓风或增强的藤田5级龙卷风）、隆起和剪切载荷。该设施还将提供一个高速动态流动模拟器来模拟地面风，以及两个压力加载执行器系统来评估动态风荷载下建筑构件的性能。HPC集群的计算能力和超高带宽将提供远程使用、混合实验、实时分析、自动备份、管理和共享数据，以及与NHERI网络基础设施的无缝集成。这些能力将使以前不可行的高风险探索性研究成为可能，并将为解决与弹性基础设施、生命线、风能和气象学相关的突出风危害问题开辟道路。

The Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) will be supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) as a distributed, multi-user national facility that will provide the natural hazards research community with access to research infrastructure that will include earthquake and wind engineering experimental facilities, cyberinfrastructure, computational modeling and simulation tools, and research data, as well as education and community outreach activities. NHERI will be comprised of separate awards for a Network Coordination Office, Cyberinfrastructure, Computational Modeling and Simulation Center, and Experimental Facilities, including a post-disaster, rapid response research facility. Awards made for NHERI will contribute to NSF's role in the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP) and the National Windstorm Impact Reduction Program. NHERI continues NSF's emphasis on earthquake engineering research infrastructure previously supported under the George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation as part of NEHRP, but now broadens that support to include wind engineering research infrastructure. NHERI has the broad goal of supporting research that will improve the resilience and sustainability of civil infrastructure, such as buildings and other structures, underground structures, levees, and critical lifelines, against the natural hazards of earthquakes and windstorms, in order to minimize loss of life, damage, and economic loss. Information about NHERI resources will be available on the DesignSafe-ci.org web portal.NHERI Experimental Facilities will provide access to their experimental resources, user services, and data management infrastructure for NSF-supported research and education awards. This NHERI Experimental Facility, located at the University of Florida, broadly supports research for mitigating the impacts of extreme wind and rain events on civil infrastructure. This facility will provide users with access to a diverse suite of wind engineering experimental resources, including an atmospheric boundary layer wind tunnel and specialized testing devices, which can replicate damaging effects from tornadoes, thunderstorms, and hurricanes. These experimental resources will support research to understand the vulnerability of civil infrastructure to extreme windstorm events, refine computational tools to predict performance of civil infrastructure, and advance knowledge to improve building codes and standards. This research will aid broader resiliency efforts to safeguard hazard-prone communities from extreme weather. The facility will conduct annual user workshops and will host Research Experiences for Undergraduate students. Combined with a collocated high performance computing (HPC) cluster, this facility will offer the experimental and computational capacity, staffing, domain expertise, and end-to-end project services for users to conduct a range of wind engineering research. The experimental resources at this facility will enable the dynamic loads from extreme winds (hurricanes and tornadoes) to be properly characterized and applied to full-scale components and systems, with durations reflective of actual events. The facility will provide a flexible framework that offers repeatability and scalability and is adaptable to many wind hazard scenarios and infrastructure systems. The facility will include five experimental resources. The atmospheric boundary layer wind tunnel has a unique, self-tuning flow control system that dramatically improves the breadth of achievable flow. The multi-axis wind load simulator can create dynamic wind pressure (up to a Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale Category 5 hurricane or Enhanced Fujita Scale 5 tornado), uplift, and shear loads on full-scale specimens (up to seven meters by five meters). The facility also will provide a high-speed, dynamic flow simulator to simulate surface winds, and two pressure loading actuator systems to evaluate building component performance under dynamic wind loads. The computational power and ultra-high bandwidth of the HPC cluster will offer remote use, hybrid experiments, real-time analysis, automated back-up, curation and sharing of data, and seamless integration with the NHERI cyberinfrastructure. These capabilities will enable previously infeasible high-risk exploratory research and will open pathways to solve outstanding wind hazard issues associated with resilient infrastructure, lifelines, wind energy, and meteorology.