Wind Resistance Correlation of Adhesive Applied Roofing System

The adhesive applied roofing system (AARS) is a new generation of built-up roof, gaining popularity in the Canadian low-slope roofing market. All components of the AARS are integrated using adhesive and unlike mechanically attached roofing systems, there are no fasteners used. Thus, an AARS can offer less thermal bridging, air intrusion, air leakage, moisture migration, and corrosion problems. The components are, however, subjected to the combined action of tensile and shearing forces due to the dynamic wind uplift action as a result of wind flow suction over a low-slope roof. As part of an ongoing collaboration between industries, universities, and government departments to quantify the wind uplift resistance standards of the AARS, three different testing methods have been successfully developed: (1) uplift resistance testing, (2) peel resistance testing, and (3) wind uplift testing. Small scale specimens were used for the uplift and peel resistance testing, whereas wind uplift investigations were performed using full-scale mock-ups. This paper focuses on a proposed correlation amongst these three different test methods, namely, “Higher resistance in both peel and uplift tests will result in the same or higher wind uplift resistance.” Four different scenarios of two sets of samples each were constructed by varying only one component between the samples. All samples were tested in all three tests methods and data from these tests were compared to verify the proposed correlation. The test results obtained from the small-scale experiments proved to be useful to predict full-scale system behavior as demonstrated in the paper through comparison of the resistance data and failure modes.