Framework for Assessing Wood-Framed Structural Durability to Fungal Attack in Hazard-Prone Regions

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Abstract

Significant moisture intrusion (SMI) occurs when a natural hazard drives moisture into a building envelope during flooding, storm surge, or wind-driven rain, or through damaged components and cladding. The frequency of natural hazards causing SMI is expected to increase due to climate change, and it is increasingly likely that a building will experience multiple design-level events within its service life. It is critical, therefore, to consider cumulative hazard effects on structural components. In the case of wood-framed structures, fungal attack is closely associated with SMI and has significant impacts on structural durability. This paper addresses recent advances in characterizing fungal degradation effects on wood-framed structural assemblies through experimental characterization of fungal decay and multiscale modeling. It proposes a pathway for assessing community-level structural durability to biodeterioration. The paper first discusses the available literature on the effects of fungal attack on wood as a structural material, and it also summarizes a multiscale model developed by the authors for fungal degraded wood that is built up from the polymer level to the scale of structural components. The paper then describes how this model may be applied to study fungal-degraded structural components. Finally, the paper discusses a path forward for applying these results to develop fragility functions of wood structures that can assess the community-level vulnerability of structures to cumulative damage from fungal degradation.

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