ASCE has honored Timothy A. Reinhold, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE, with the 2022 Jack E. Cermak Medal for his leadership in the development of modern wind engineering practices for the safe and efficient design of residential and small commercial construction.
Reinhold has made numerous seminal contributions to wind engineering and the mitigation of wind damage, particularly for wood-frame houses, through his career; these include the development of two significant research facilities, namely, the Florida Coastal Monitoring Program (FCMP) and the IBHS Research Center. He has also made significant contributions that have led to improved performance of wood-frame houses in severe windstorms.
The FCMP was a pioneering research program where dozens of real houses along the gulf and Atlantic coasts were instrumented with multiple sensors together a series of portal towers. This approach allowed both wind speeds and building pressures to be measured simultaneously during landfalling hurricanes. This has enabled validation of wind tunnel methods and of hurricane wind speeds and wind field models, both of which are critical for the reliable design of houses, buildings, and other infrastructure systems. This data has also been critical for the development and validation of risk/catastrophe models. Reinhold did the original development of FCMP in the early 2000s, and that research program is still going strong, now led by the University of Florida, which has spawned a wide range of follow-on research such as direct measurements of wind-driven rain. FCMP has truly had a broad impact on how we consider hurricanes in design.
Reinhold also developed the globally unique “full-scale” wind tunnel at IBHS Research Center. One of the issues with using wind tunnel for design is that there are significant challenges with determining loads on small components. Failure of such components and cladding systems are the major drivers of losses in severe windstorms such as hurricanes. Full-scale measurements are really the only way to deal with such issues. The IBHS wind tunnel is a remarkable feat of engineering, and research at the facility is transforming our understanding of wind loads on building component and cladding systems, load paths in wood-frame houses, and fundamental concepts in building aerodynamics.
This medal was established by the Engineering Mechanics Division / SEI to recognize Dr. Jack E. Cermak’s lifetime achievements in the field of wind engineering and industrial aerodynamics.
