Project contact is Erol Karacabeyli at FPInnovations
Summary
To support NRCan's Tall Wood Building Demonstration Initiative, FPInnovations developed and published the 2014 Edition of Technical Guide for the Design and Construction of Tall Wood Buildings in Canada. More than 80 technical professionals comprised of design consultants and experts from FPInnovations, the National Research Council, the Canadian Wood Council and universities were involved in its development. The Guide has gained national and worldwide reputation as one of the most complete and credible documents helping to introduce to the design and construction community, and Authorities Having Jurisdiction the terms "Mass Timber Construction" and "Hybrid Tall Wood Buildings".
Since the publication of the First Edition, a number of tall wood buildings have been designed and constructed. Substantial regulatory changes are expected to happen based on the experience obtained from the demonstration initiative and the extensive research that has taken place domestically and internationally since the publication of the First Edition. These developments highlight a need for the Guide to be updated so that it aligns with efforts currently underway nationally and provincially and continues to lead in providing the design and construction community technical insight into new opportunities for building in wood.
The First Edition of the Guide helped to focus the efforts of the early adopters who participated in NRCan's Tall Wood Building Demonstration Initiative. Updating and aligning the Guide with the release of the new National Building Code of Canada and the Canadian wood design standard (CSA O86), and sharing the experiences gained from tall wood buildings built since the First Edition, will not only continue to expand the base of early adopters, but also help to move aspects of mass timber and hybrid wood buildings into the mainstream.
A balanced combination of heat flows creates suitable conditions for thermal comfort—a factor contributing to the quality of the internal environment of buildings. The presented analysis of selected thermal-technical parameters is up-to-date and suitable for verifying the parameters of building constructions. The research also applied a methodology for examining the acoustic parameters of structural parts of buildings in laboratory conditions. In this research, selected variant solutions of perimeter walls based on prefab cross laminated timber were investigated in terms of acoustic and thermal-technical properties. The variants structures were investigated in laboratory but also in model conditions. The results of the analyses show significant differences between the theoretical or declared parameters and the values measured in laboratory conditions. The deviations of experimental measurements from the calculated or declared parameters were not as significant for variant B as they were for variant A. These findings show that for these analyzed sandwich structures based on wood, it is not always possible to reliably declare calculated values of thermal-technical and acoustic parameters. It is necessary to thoroughly examine such design variants, which would contribute to the knowledge in this field of research of construction systems based on wood.
The paper describes experimental and numerical analyses on a completely new connection system developed for CLT (Cross Laminated Timber) constructions. The innovative solution herein proposed, named X-RAD, consists of a point-to-point mechanical connecti...
Calculative Cost and Process Analysis of Timber-Concrete-Composite Ceilings with Focus on Effort and Performance Values for Cost Calculations of Multi-Storey Timber Buildings
Composite structures use the advantages of two materials – timber and concrete – and improve the efficiency of a material application. Especially the concept of timber-concrete-composite ceilings has synergetic effects to achieve an effective ratio of thickness to span with high cost effectiveness simultaneously. Following the systematic...
This article outlines the structural design approach used for the Brock Commons Student Residence project, an 18-storey wood building at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. When completed in summer 2017, it will be the tallest mass timber hybrid building in the world at 53 meters high. Fast + Epp are the structural engineers, working in conjunction with Acton Ostry Architects and Hermann Kaufmann Architekten. Total project costs, inclusive of fees, permits etc. are $51.5M CAD.
The widely available automated prefabrication in timber construction companies, as well as modern CAD software with application programing interfaces, allow for the design and production of increasingly geometrically complex building components. This development also enables and demands at the same time advanced joinery techniques. Analog to the developments in timber framing, this article presents the adaptation of a traditional
wood-wood joinery technique from cabinetmaking, on the casestudy of a shell structure built from curved cross-laminated timber (CLT) panels. The dovetail-joints allow for a load-bearing glued joint between the CLT panels. They provide an aesthetic, visible connection and simplify the assembly through their integrated locator features.
The present work aims to define horizontal joint dimension tolerances for newly proposed prefabricated façade systems for applications in tall cross laminated timber (CLT) buildings based on the compression perpendicular to grain characteristics of the component. This requires a thorough understanding of structural settlement under vertical...
