∗ Corresponding author; Professor, Department of Aerospace Engineering, 2271 Howe Hall, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, 50011, USA, E-mail: ppsarkar@iastate.edu a Former Graduate Research Assistant, Iowa State University, E-mail: CaseJeremy@stanleygroup.com Jeremy Case, Partha Sarkar, and Sri Sritharan (2014). Effect of Low-Rise Building Geometry on Tornado-Induced Loads. Journal of Wind Engineering and Industrial Aerodynamics, 133 (10) 124-134. Effect of low-rise building geometry on tornado-induced loads 1 Jeremy Case a , Partha Sarkar b* , Sri Sritharan c 2 3 a Stanley Consultants, Inc., Muscatine, Iowa, USA 4 b Department of Aerospace Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, USA 5 c Department of Civil, Const. and Env. Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, USA 6 7 8 9 1. Introduction 10 Various opinions as to whether tornado-resistant design of residential buildings is possible, let alone 11 feasible, have been offered. These opinions have been largely motivated by experience obtained from 12 evaluating structural failure due to strong winds and prejudiced by the awe-inspiring destructive capacity 13 of tornadoes, but they have not been based on the comparison of pressure data obtained from either full- 14 scale or laboratory simulated tornadoes with the capacities of the structural connections and members of 15 typical residential construction. Modern engineering is based on the application of rational and empirical 16 principles, but for tornado-resistant design, there has been little or no data that could be used to form 17 engineering principles. In the past, quantification of pressures on a building envelope and forces on a 18 building structure due to the occurrence of a tornado in its proximity has been limited to forensic 19 investigation and engineering judgments. The reason for this limitation is threefold: the lack of research 20 facilities capable of determining the pressures and forces on structures due to tornadoes; the absence of 21 full-scale data to corroborate the results from laboratory experiments or field structures; and a lack of 22 interest in pursuing tornado-resistant design on the part of many as it was assumed to be cost prohibitive. 23 A tornado simulator has been constructed at Iowa State University (ISU) to overcome the first 24 challenge (Haan et al. 2008). The ISU tornado simulator is capable of creating a model scale tornado that 25 allows building models to be placed in its path as well as having the ability to travel relative to a building 26 model to be investigated. The ISU tornado simulator also has mechanisms to adjust several different 27