The HurriQuake nail is a construction

nail Nail or Nails may refer to: In biology * Nail (anatomy), toughened protective protein-keratin (known as alpha-keratin, also found in hair) at the end of an animal digit, such as fingernail * Nail (beak), a plate of hard horny tissue at the tip ...

Bostitch Stanley Bostitch, previously and more commonly known as simply Bostitch, is an American company that specializes in the design and manufacture of fastening tools—such as staplers, staple guns, nailers, riveters, and glue guns—and fasteners� ...

, a division of

Stanley Works Stanley Black & Decker, Inc., formerly known as The Stanley Works, is a Fortune 500 American manufacturer of industrial tools and household hardware and provider of security products. Headquartered in the greater Hartford city of New Britain, ...

, and patented in 2004. The features of the nail are designed primarily to provide more structural integrity for a building, especially against the forces of

hurricane A tropical cyclone is a rapidly rotating storm system characterized by a low-pressure center, a closed low-level atmospheric circulation, strong winds, and a spiral arrangement of thunderstorms that produce heavy rain and squalls. Depend ...

s and

earthquake An earthquake (also known as a quake, tremor or temblor) is the shaking of the surface of the Earth resulting from a sudden release of energy in the Earth's lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, from ...

s. The Hurriquake nail won the ''

Popular Science ''Popular Science'' (also known as ''PopSci'') is an American digital magazine carrying popular science content, which refers to articles for the general reader on science and technology subjects. ''Popular Science'' has won over 58 awards, incl ...

'' Best of What's New 2006 award for Home Technology and was honored as the grand award winner for Best Innovation of the Year. It is covered by , issued July 6, 2004. The Hurriquake nail was discontinued in 2011.

Features

Starting at the bottom of the nail, the ring shanks on the lower half of the nail are enhanced with angular barbs, which add resistance to the nail being pulled out. The middle of the nail has no extra features, which leaves the section most likely to be damaged during an earthquake thicker and less prone to damage. The area directly below the head of the nail features a spiral-style shank used to enhance the nail's strength in holding boards together. This enhancement keeps boards that are nailed together from moving around under nature's forces and overall weakening the joints. The final feature of this nail is the nail head, which is 25% larger than the average, allowing it to be more resistant to being pulled completely through attached pieces of wood.

Design

Pre-development

The nail's design began when its inventor,

civil engineer A civil engineer is a person who practices civil engineering – the application of planning, designing, constructing, maintaining, and operating infrastructure while protecting the public and environmental health, as well as improving existing ...

Ed Sutt, traveled to the

Caribbean The Caribbean (, ) ( es, El Caribe; french: la Caraïbe; ht, Karayib; nl, De Caraïben) is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean Se ...

in the wake of

Hurricane Marilyn Hurricane Marilyn was the most powerful hurricane to strike the Virgin Islands since Hurricane Hugo of 1989, and the third such tropical cyclone in roughly a two-week time span to strike or impact the Leeward Islands, the others being Hurricane ...

. Sutt's trip to the Caribbean was part of a team examining the wreckage of the 80% of the island's homes and business that had been destroyed in the hurricane's winds of 95 mph (155 km/h). The finding among the homes that had been destroyed was that wood failure was not the cause of destruction; instead, the findings showed that the nails holding the wood together had failed, leading to the buildings' ultimate collapse. Sutt's research began after taking a research assistantship program at the Clemson Wind Load Test Facility, which had received funding through a grant from

FEMA The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is an agency of the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS), initially created under President Jimmy Carter by Presidential Reorganization Plan No. 3 of 1978 and implemented by two Exec ...

. The grant was used to research wooden-framed structures and the relationship of their failure to wind velocity. The outcome of the project's research showed that the best way to strengthen a structure was to improve the fasteners that held the

roof A roof ( : roofs or rooves) is the top covering of a building, including all materials and constructions necessary to support it on the walls of the building or on uprights, providing protection against rain, snow, sunlight, extremes of temper ...

ing and wall sheathing to the internal frame, and with this information Sutt signed on as a fastener engineer for the Stanley subsidiary,

Development

As development began on the nail, there were three major causes of failure to be overcome. These were having the nail — head and all — rip through the sheathing, having the entire nail pull out of the frame, and having the nail's midsection snap under stress. Early research showed that the larger the head, the less chance there was of the nail being ripped through the sheathing. However, the difficult task was increasing the nail's head while still making it compatible with popular

nail gun A nail gun, nailgun or nailer is a form of hammer used to drive nails into wood or other materials. It is usually driven by compressed air (pneumatic), electromagnetism, highly flammable gases such as butane or propane, or, for powder-actuate ...

models. After finding the ideal nail head size, the next task to conquer was preventing the entire nail from pulling out of the frame. This was overcome by adding barbed ring shanks around the lower portion of the nail. During the testing of the shanks, it was noted that above a certain point the ridges no longer strengthened the nail but instead weakened the nail by making it more susceptible to shearing. The final touch to the original prototype was a special high-carbon alloy designed by a

metallurgist Metallurgy is a domain of materials science and engineering that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metallic elements, their inter-metallic compounds, and their mixtures, which are known as alloys. Metallurgy encompasses both the sc ...

that had the perfect combination of stiffness and pliability, giving it the highest possible strength.

Sheather plus and beyond

After analyzing hundreds of designs, and finally coming up with what was believed to be the best design, Bostich finally released the nail in 2005 and labeled it the Sheather Plus. Even though the new nail was stronger than most nails, the barbs, which added the much needed strength to the nail's holding power, weakened the strength of the joint by opening the hole too far. This caused the joint to be sloppy and wobbly, so the team went back to the drawing board where the final feature was added to the nail. To compensate for the extra width of the nail hole, due to the ring shanks, Sutt decided to add a thicker screw-shank to the portion of the nail directly under the head. This addition thickened the top portion of the nail giving it a tighter joint, as well as enhancing its overall holding power.

Testing

Independent tests of the nail's stretch were conducted by several organizations, including

Florida International University Florida International University (FIU) is a public university, public research university with its main campus in Miami-Dade County. Founded in 1965, the school opened its doors to students in 1972. FIU has grown to become the third-largest uni ...

and the

International Code Council The International Building Code (IBC) is a model building code developed by the International Code Council (ICC). It has been adopted for use as a base code standard by most jurisdictions in the United States. The IBC addresses both health and saf ...

. Those tests confirmed the claims by the researchers at Bostitch that they had created a better nail. Among all of the different tests, it was found that the new nail had twice the "uplift capacity" of other power driven nails, as well as increasing a home's resistance to wind and increasing earthquake resistance by up to 50%. For further testing, Sutt asked for the assistance of Scott Schiff, the coordinator of the graduate program in civil engineering and engineering mechanics at

Clemson University Clemson University () is a public land-grant research university in Clemson, South Carolina. Founded in 1889, Clemson is the second-largest university in the student population in South Carolina. For the fall 2019 semester, the university enro ...

. Tests at the Clemson Wind Load Test Facility confirmed what had already been stated. With equipment to simulate the force of winds, roofs attached with traditional nails were pulled apart at around 13,500 pounds of force (60.1 kN). At forces up to 16,000 pounds (71 kN), walls built with the HurriQuake environment nail showed minimal wall movement. As the pressure increased to 17,000 pounds (75 kN), then 18,000 (80 kN), then 19,000 (85 kN), the walls began to make creaking and groaning noises but they still stayed attached. As the test rig pushed 20,000 pounds (89 kN), the maximum it was capable of testing, it gave out, showing that the HurriQuake environment nail sustained 20,000 pounds of force (89 kN) and still was not sheared or completely pulled out.

References

External links

* The HurriQuake nail was the lead segment i
a 2006 episode
of the Voice of America's science and technology program, "Our World," hosted by Art Chimes. {{DEFAULTSORT:Nail Fasteners Hardware (mechanical) Tropical cyclone preparedness Woodworking Earthquake engineering