CASE STUDY
The Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety, Richburg, South Carolina
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The Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS) Center is a state-of-the-art research facility located in Richburg, South Carolina. This unique facility enables researchers to more fully and accurately evaluate residential and commercial construction materials and systems under realistic re-creations of severe weather hazards. IBHS is the only lab in the world that can test full-scale one and two story residential and commercial buildings in a controlled, repeatable fashion for highly realistic windstorms, wind-driven rain, hailstorms and wildfire ember storms.
The main chamber is a specially designed wind tunnel that is exceptionally large - 6 stories tall and 145 feet wide by 145 feet long. This equates to more than 21,000 square feet under the roof, the equivalent of 4½ basketball courts. The large test chamber has an enormous wall of 105 fans—each nearly 6 feet in diameter and equipped with a 350 HP engine. Together the fans can replicate realistic weather conditions including Category 1, 2 and 3 hurricanes with winds up to 130 mph, extra-tropical windstorms, wind-driven rain conditions, and straight-line windstorms.
The main chamber is a specially designed wind tunnel that is exceptionally large - 6 stories tall and 145 feet wide by 145 feet long. This equates to more than 21,000 square feet under the roof, the equivalent of 4½ basketball courts. The large test chamber has an enormous wall of 105 fans—each nearly 6 feet in diameter and equipped with a 350 HP engine. Together the fans can replicate realistic weather conditions including Category 1, 2 and 3 hurricanes with winds up to 130 mph, extra-tropical windstorms, wind-driven rain conditions, and straight-line windstorms.
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ClarkPowell helped IBHS upgrade their audiovisual system across the entire research institute site. This increase in AV capabilities includes the ability to go to a virtual space and live streaming during Covid with higher level teaching options. The center has added robotic cameras in the test chamber with a control room able to access all the feeds, a conference center, digital signage and a small media studio where the feeds are recorded and edited for production.
