Three Little Pigs take on big bad wolf

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Jan 26th, 2007

Three Little Pigs take on big bad wolf

Western News - London,Ontario,Canada

By Bob Klanac

http://communications.uwo.ca/western_news/story.html?listing_id=22619

Researchers at Western's Three Little Pigs facility are almost done

with the huffing and puffing and getting ready to blow something

down.

" We're moving in that direction, " says Mike Bartlett of Western's

Faculty of Engineering's Civil & Environmental Engineering

Department.

The project started life in 2004 when a group of Western engineering

researchers combined their separate wind-related, building science

and structural engineering agendas with the goal of building a

single facility to study them all.

The original name for the project was the cumbersome Testing Full-

Scale Houses and Light Frame Buildings to Destruction Using

Realistic, Extreme Environmental Loads. After they realized their

colleagues referred to the project as the Three Little Pigs Project,

they adopted the name for themselves. The name was a convenient way

to use the fabled pigs and wolf tale as explanatory shorthand in

telling others about it.

Located at London International Airport, Three Little Pigs consists

of a large house over which slides an even larger metal shed to

allow for testing in all kinds of environments including man-made

ones.

The project has been under construction since 2005 and as they

finish it up, Bartlett enthuses about the many new study tools

introduced recently.

" We're in a transition from building it towards doing research and

contract research there, " he says.

" The really important thing that's happened is that just before

Christmas the English firm Cambridge Consulting Limited visited us

to see whether their control program could control a system of 10

prototype actuators that we have built, " says Bartlett.

The system enables Bartlett and his team to create large volumes of

heavy air pressure or suction for testing on the house.

" The fan and valve together allow us to generate very high positive

or negative pressures which allow us to fluctuate the wind several

times per second to simulate very high gusts of wind, " he says.

Bartlett says that this process will assist in testing building

methods even down to determining how many nails are required in a

roof to ensure it doesn't sail away in a wind storm or hurricane.

Another test is being done to ensure that their computer models are

accurately gauged to represent what happens to a real house.

Pressure boxes will be installed on the full-scale house, completely

covering the surface.

" You really won't be able to see the house for all these pressure

boxes, " says Bartlett.

The growth and development of mould is another area for study by the

facility. Bartlett says that Western Engineering's Prof. Savory

from Mechanical Engineering and Jayshri Sabarinathan of Electrical

and Computer Engineering along with graduate student Sauer have

developed a prototype device that will detect mould in a wall cavity

and using wireless technology, send that information to a central

processing unit.

" We hope under safe conditions to have a little mould happen out

there and we want to be able to use this device to measure the rate

of mould growth, " he says.

The latest upgrade to the house came a few weeks ago by way of an in-

kind donation of $170,000 from the Canadian Institute of Steel

Construction.

" They donated a galvanized steel reaction frame that cocoons the

house, " he says. " The house is now in a cage. "

Completion of these new additions to the Three Little Pigs testing

environment will be showcased in a workshop at the beginning of May.

" That workshop is going to show various corporate entities what the

completed lab looks like and what kind of work we're going to do out

there and perhaps what work we can do for them, " says Bartlett.

" That open house will mark a very real stage in completing the

facility and showing it to people. "

For more information on the project, go to

eng.uwo.ca/research/ttlpp/