Reported September 2008 GAINESVILLE, Fla. (Ivanhoe Newswire) --
More hurricanes strike the U.S. in September than in any other
month of the year. The best-built houses are more likely to
survive these severe storms. Now, there’s a new way to test how
homes hold up -- and it’s just like being in the eye of the
storm. With the wind, the rain and the destruction, hurricanes
can wreak havoc on buildings. That’s why civil engineers from
the University of Florida built the largest portable hurricane
simulator in the world. The idea was to find out what materials
hold up best in a storm. “There’s no instruction manual on how
to build one of these,” Forrest Masters, Ph.D., assistant
professor of civil engineering at the University of Florida,
told Ivanhoe. Eight industrial fans powered by four marine
diesel engines run the system. A 5,000 gallon tank provides
water and cools the engines. The simulator can produce winds of
up to 125 mph -- a strong category 3 hurricane force -- against
a mock house. The entire system