Experimental Investigation on the Behaviour of Modified Connections at the Overhang Roof Under Uplift Pressure

The northern area of Peninsular Malaysia discovered that most of rural houses with the overhang roof was built without structural considerations, the overhang roof is the most vulnerable part of the roof system during strong wind events. Due to a lack of information about the behaviour of the modification connection to the overhang roof, this paper studies the behaviours of the prototype using modified connections with three variance parameters applied for the corrugated cladding and trapezoidal cladding with the same gauge. The three variance parameters are the type of reinforced material, number of reinforced materials, and the length of reinforced material. The PVC pipes and metal straps were added to the connection at the overhang roof part, and applied surface loading test was to simulate the uniformly uplift wind pressure. Results of modified connection using metal straps showed that the increment ratio on the total applied force for corrugated cladding in between 1.05 and 1.26, and the increment ratio for trapezoidal cladding in between 1.01 and 1.05 only. Moreover, results for modified connection using PVC pipe for corrugated cladding have an increment ratio for the total applied force of 1.47–1.79, while trapezoidal cladding only has a ratio of the increment of 1.20–1.60. In conclusion, the modified connection using PVC pipes was found to be the most efficient modified connection compared to metal straps, and metal straps are shown more suitable to be used for corrugated roof cladding.