Date of Award

Summer 1993

Document Type

Thesis - Restricted

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering

First Advisor

Petrie, Thomas W.

Abstract

The roofing industry currently has no means to predict the mechanical failure of a roof membrane . The inability to predict such a failure leaves industry no means to accurately determine the longevity of an existing roof. Motivation for this thesis is to develop a passive stress monitor. A passive stress monitor is a conceptual device that would allow the prediction of a roof membrane's failure by relating the strains of two adjoining materials used in a roof system through the equal force the two materials share due to the slip free bond between them. The two materials of interest in the passive stress monitor are a metal specimen, representative of a roof flashing, and a roof membrane. Four typical roof membrane configurations were tested in this thesis. Success of the passive stress monitor hinges on whether or not the strain in the roof membrane can be related to the strain in the flashing. All testing was conducted in the Building Envelope Research Center (BERG) at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The primary goal of this testing was to develop a passive stress monitor; however, secondary goals were to introduce mechanical testing into the BERC and also to develop testing procedures that could be implemented on an existing roof structure.

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