Prefabrication by off-site manufacturing leads to a reduced overall construction schedule, improved quality, and reduced resource wastage. Modular building is therefore increasingly popular and promoted. With the recent promotion a number of relevant studies have been completed, however, a review of the design, construction, and performance of modular buildings under different loading conditions is lacking. This paper presents a state-of-the-art review of modular building structures. First, structural forms and construction materials are presented as a brief introduction to the modular structures. Modular building is shown to refer not to a single structure type, but a variety of structural systems and materials. These modular structures might perform differently to similar traditional structures and the structural performance is highly dependent on inter- and intra-module connections. The structural response of modules to different hazards is then considered, followed by the current design practice and methodology. As a currently developing area there is great potential for innovation in modular structures and several key research areas are identified for further work.

Structural response of modular buildings – An overview

Aerodynamic forces on bridges are commonly separated into static, self-excited, and buffeting force components. By delving into the relationships among force descriptors for static, self-excited, and buffeting components, novel perspectives are developed to unveil the subtle underlying complexities in modeling aerodynamic forces. Formulations for airfoil sections and those based on quasi-steady theory are both considered. Time domain modeling of unsteady aerodynamic forces is presented, including their frequency-dependent characteristics and spanwise correlation, which are often neglected in current time domain analyses due to modeling difficulty. A nonlinear aerodynamic force model is given that considers nonlinear dependence of the aerodynamic forces on the effective angle of incidence. Nonlinear aerodynamics may become increasingly critical when aerodynamic characteristics of innovative bridge deck designs, with attractive aerodynamic performance, exhibit significant sensitivity with respect to the effective angle of incidence and with the increases in the bridge span. Synergistic review of the authors' recent work in bridge aerodynamics presented here, in light of current state-of-the-art in this field, may serve as a building block for developing new analysis tools and frameworks for the accurate prediction of the response of long span bridges under strong wind excitation.

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Advances in modeling of Aerodynamic forces on bridge decks

The Merapi 2010 eruption: An interdisciplinary impact assessment methodology for studying pyroclastic density current dynamics

T.A. Wyatt

Papers

A model of wind-borne debris damage

Measurement and application of the aerodynamic admittance function for a box-girder bridge

Determination of gust action stress cycle counts for fatigue checking of line-like steel structures

Dynamic gust response of inclined towers