Bringing down the house

The wind generation technology developed by Cambridge Consultants – and featured on the cover of Eureka’s December 2006 issue – has gone into production. The company has developed a system of 70 interconnected pressure actuators that are used in a ‘wind simulator’ that creates hurricane-like conditions. It will be used at the Insurance Research Lab for Better Homes in London, Ontario, as it attempts to destroy a house. The exercise is part of the ‘Three Little Pigs’ project being run by The University of Western Ontario, Canada, to improve safety standards for low-rise buildings. A fast-acting valve system in each actuator allows the simulated wind pressure to reverse direction seven times a second. “We are going to determine how the rapid changes in pressure and direction of wind cause houses and other light-frame buildings to respond,” said Gregory Kopp of the University of Western Ontario, who is leading the project. “No one has been able to either simulate this or measure it in an actual storm.”