Hanger Design in Hurricane Zones

I was looking through photos of airplanes destroyed in their hangers in the
recent hurricane season

Are there any hanger designs that consistently work better than others in
hurricane prone environments? The latest hangers at our airport (CYBW) are
steel frame with steel siding with some of them being formed concrete or
concrete block. The latter two look expensive, but VERY sturdy.

Marc

IIRC, the ones with the 1 or 2 part doors that fold upward
survived MUCH better than those with doors that rolled to the side.

Was it because of the doors themselves, or because the framework that
supports the doors had to be beefier, and thus the hangar itself?

Jose
--
Money: what you need when you run out of brains.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

I'm not an engineer but just by the shape of the monolithic buit structures
you'd think they could handle winds better than normal construction. Check
out http://www.monolithic.com/ and maybe it will give some ideas!

And didn't we just discuss this subject not to long ago?

Patrick
student SP
aircraft structural mech

W P Dixon wrote:

I'm not an engineer but just by the shape of the monolithic buit
structures you'd think they could handle winds better than normal
construction. Check out http://www.monolithic.com/ and maybe it will
give some ideas!

They've got several hangars like that up at MPO. They have sort of clamshell
doors. No experience with hurricanes up there, though.

And didn't we just discuss this subject not to long ago?

Last year about this time. Just like the hurricanes, it'll be back.

George Patterson
Drink is the curse of the land. It makes you quarrel with your neighbor.
It makes you shoot at your landlord. And it makes you miss him.

"Marc CYBW" wrote in message
news:Aed9f.66688$S4.29317@edtnps84...
I was looking through photos of airplanes destroyed in their hangers in
the
recent hurricane season

Are there any hanger designs that consistently work better than others in
hurricane prone environments? The latest hangers at our airport (CYBW) are
steel frame with steel siding with some of them being formed concrete or
concrete block. The latter two look expensive, but VERY sturdy.

Just talking about building design in general, the best will be formed and
poured steel reinforced concrete, followed by concrete block with some of
the cores poured full of concrete and re-bar. This all assumes not being in
a storm surge situation, because all bets are off, then.

The weakest link in these types of construction will be the doors and roof.
It is possible to make a pretty solid roof using steel truss construction,
with a poured lightweight concrete roof, if attention is paid to anchoring
the roof structure to the walls.

That leaves the doors. I don't know of a commercially available door that
would withstand much over a Category One storm. Perhaps a bifold door, with
anchor points inside and outside of the structure, so that temporary "guy
wires" could be added, thus preventing failure under the bending of the wind
loads. The flying debris would be a problem, so it would have to have a
very thick metal skin.

Of course, if you did all this, you would not be able to afford the monthly
rent. What to do, what to do? ;-)

Anyone know of some cheap military hardened bunkers for rent?
--
Jim in NC
--
Jim in NC

One of the things that us in the Upper Midwest can't appreciate is that
hurricane force winds can come from any direction.

Some things to look for on an individual hangar would be the presence
of fixed shear panels on the sides of any bifold main door - i. e. the
door should be at least say 8 ft narrower than the hangar. Otherwise
the door opening could "parallelogram" over due to side loads.

As an alternate, instead of shear panels, a properly reinforced and
fitted bifold door could effectively react such a deformation mode.
That would require diagonal cross brace members in the bifold door
sections. This could be the reason that sliding doors don't react
hurricane loads as well, since the slider track at the top would allow
the roof and side walls to slide with respect to the door bottoms.

Reducing the sidewall height (and of course the resulting ceiling
height) to no more than necessary would help reduce the wind profile.

There are a lot of flimsy doors from "Fred and Barney Engineering" out
there. Some way of reinforcing a bifold door at the center with a
temporary vertical beam system to cut the apparent span of the door and
the door opening structure would certainly help. It would be important
to include a floor and ceiling anchor systems for such a jury-rigged
fix.

Mnay hangars were built years ago when there was really little serious
structural analysis and construction methods were definitely inferior.
I don't think that wood with steel skin is necessarily bad, but the
wood frame has to be used properly.

In article ,
Richard Riley wrote:

On Mon, 31 Oct 2005 00:06:56 GMT, "Marc CYBW"
wrote:

:I was looking through photos of airplanes destroyed in their hangers in the
:recent hurricane season
:
:Are there any hanger designs that consistently work better than others in
:hurricane prone environments? The latest hangers at our airport (CYBW) are
:steel frame with steel siding with some of them being formed concrete or
:concrete block. The latter two look expensive, but VERY sturdy.

One of the magazines I subscribe to - I *think* Aviation Consumer -
had an article on which hangars survived last year's hurricanes the
best. IIRC, the ones with the 1 or 2 part doors that fold upward
survived MUCH better than those with doors that rolled to the side.
They were only looking at steel frame with steel siding - I doubt
anything made of wood would have survived those winds.


My hangar (concrete block, roof frame roof, bi-fold door) withstood
Hurricane Charley (the eye passed directly over us). Of course, by the
time Charley got here, winds were down to 90 kt. We lost a couple of
shingles -- that's all.

"Richard Riley" wrote in message
"As shown in the photos here, nearly every sliding door on the airport
was lifted out of it's tracks and blown in. Some sailed yards across
the airport and one wrapped itself around a utility pole.

Once relieved of their doors, hangars failed progressively, with
exterior walls and downwind doors departing and interior partitions
crumbling. Many of the airplanes were blows right out of the hangars
and found dozens of yards away, usually in tatters. The most windward
row of T hangars - constructed in the 1970s - was blown completely
down, leaving a debris-strewn concrete pad but little else."....
They go on a lot. But the key is the door.

The door is the key. Wilma devastated the little airport where I grew up.
It's heartbreaking. The newer hangars with the bifold doors and external guy
wires (installed just before the storm) had no damage. The older hangars
with sliding doors had damage from doors that fell in. The concrete hangars
with wood roofs had no roofs anymore because the sectioned hanging doors
gave way. The worst damage was the older small T-hangars which were built
before any windstorm code was required.

D.