Comparing Reinforced Concrete Buildings Vs Steel Buildings in Tornadoes – Which Holds Up Better?

When it comes to natural disasters, it is very hard to be completely prepared. They often take the world by surprise and even if the weather forecasters had a few days notice to warn the rest of the population, it is certainly not enough time to reinforce buildings and make them stronger. Therefore, it Garage Door Lock Set is important to know before you move into an area, if that area happens to be tornado-prone, which type of building you should be looking for in order to stay safe in worst-case scenarios. When it comes to reinforced concrete buildings vs steel buildings in surviving tornadoes, which one is better?
This is information that is crucial to know before you move into the building and certainly well before they are predicting a storm, because once the tornado is on its way, it is too late to give any extra protection to the structure. While there are certain small steps you can take, such as boarding up the windows, this will only help the glass, at best, and definitely not make the structure any stronger.
If you are confident that the building you are living in is the strongest it can be, than the chances that it will survive most storms is very high. This is important even if you manage to get far away from the disaster area because most insurance companies will not reimburse you for natural storms and occurrences so you will really be out of luck if your home is struck.
The latest research of today points to a steel structure as a better choice than one made of concrete, even if it is reinforced. This is because the concrete is often known to crumble when the wind that hits it is stronger than it can take, which steel has the essential capability of being flexible. In an intense storm, it can bend and move slightly, which lets it survive through harder hits.
Their structure is yielding to the storm so it works with it rather than try and simply resist. While the resistance of concrete is good up to a certain extent, it reaches its limit in storms with the highest amount of power and force. In general, steel does reach this limit as quickly because of yielding quality.
Steel has a second important quality that makes it a good choice, which is the metal conductors found inside its structure. These are able to act as conduits of shock waves, moving the shock to the system around Cost To Replace Garage Door Bottom Seal the building so that the entire edifice absorbs the shock at once, rather than just the area that was hit. Since the hit is now less concentrated, the structure is better able to withstand the tornado.
Of course, the material alone is not enough to guarantee that it will survive a tough storm. It must also have smart engineering and be well built and well designed if you hope that it will make it through the hardest of hits. A well-designed concrete building is probably a better choice than a poorly thought out steel one.
The last thing to be aware of is that at times, your choice of building will not make one bit of difference. Your agonizing over reinforced concrete buildings versus steel buildings in surviving tornadoes will be for nothing if the storm is one of the most powerful kinds they are. Fortunately, they do not occur regularly or even often at all, so you will hopefully never need to know this information at all.