Worldbuilding Asked by Shalvenay on January 31, 2021
Tornadoes are well-known to be one of the most destructive forces on the planet, packing the capacity to practically delete small towns from the map and lay waste to billions of dollars worth of buildings. However, even with the highest winds recorded on this planet at an astounding 315mph, no tornado has ever been documented to flatten a high-rise or heavy institutional structure (such as a major hospital or government building); in fact, the Degrees of Damage used in the Enhanced Fujita scale for measuring damage to high-rise and instutitional buildings top out at "significant structural deformation" and "significant damage to building envelope", respectively.
Given that a tornado capable of destroying such heavy construction would still be rated EF5, what sort of wind speeds would be required to inflict total devastation (not just facade and systems damage, but structural damage to the point of collapse, significant partial collapse, or gross instability that renders the building manifestly uninhabitable) upon a structure as soundly built as a skyscraper (especially an older, lightly-glazed building using a stone/masonry curtain wall facade) or heavy-frame institutional building, or some other sort of heavy/reinforced masonry building (such as a historical aboveground fort/castle) that isn’t specifically designed to withstand a tornado for that matter? We can assume that the tornado is already loaded with typical debris such as 2x4s, miscellaneous building debris, and vehicles/vehicle parts, if the debris already present at the time of the strike matters at all.
500km/hr wind on it's own would not destroy a well built reinforced building. But the wind can bring 3 things which can:
Reinforced building survivability in extreme winds is more a combination of luck and surroundings that just wind speed.
But if you really want a number for wind destroying reinforced concrete:
This table can convert wind speed to force. Your reinforced concrete is rated at 50-70mpa under compression. The wind force of 300km/hr is around 5kpa. So youd need winds... 10,000 times stronger.
Answered by Ash on January 31, 2021
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