Comprehensive guide to engineered wood construction systems for both residential and commercial/industrial buildings. Includes information on plywood and oriented strand board (wood structural panels), glulam, I-joists, structural composite lumber, typical specifications and design recommendations for floor, wall and roof systems, diaphragms, shear walls, fire-rated systems and methods of finishing.
Mass timber is a family of Solid Laminate Timber Systems (SLTS) formed from smaller sections of timber connected by glue, mechanical fixings, moisture movement or a combination of methods. These products, which include Structural Composite Lumber, GluLam, Cross Lam, Nail Lam and Dowel Lam (or Brettstapel), have over the past two decades seen an extraordinary upsurge in use internationally. This global phenomenon has been driven by a greater emphasis on the sustainable use of renewable resources and by significant technological developments in the manufacture of SLTS. This research paper considers the merits of each of these products, their manufacturing processes and the corresponding quality assurance requirements necessary for successful project delivery. The paper describes the advantages and barriers to the use of the mass timber and provides an overview of the various aspects to be considered during design for offsite and modular construction. The work presented also provides case studies of how these products have been researched and utilised into live projects in the UK utilising local resource resulting in the formation of new supply chain arrangements. The work further explains the advantages of the respective systems for the given application including information on species selection, connection systems employed and the necessary onsite and offsite management approaches deployed.
The objective of this study was to examine new attributes and conduct economic analyses for composite CLT (CCLT) and value-added appearance-based CLT products manufactured with varying substitution of softwood lumber with structural composite lumber (SCL) and hardwood lumber. Incentives for including such materials could be aesthetic, structural and economic.
Structural and aesthetic property assessments were carried out on prototype CLT panels. Multiple CLT panel configurations (17) were evaluated to assess the effects of including hardwood and SCL materials in the layups. Presence of hardwood in the panels’ configuration generally led to higher checking and density. Because of the higher shrinkage of hardwood, the bondline suffered from more delamination. A lower density hardwood (aspen) was included in some configurations and exhibited a greater direct compatibility with current Canadian manufacturing process. Changes to this process, such as selecting a hardwood specific adhesive may lead to improvements.
The key objective of this study is to conduct a preliminary evaluation of the structural fire-resistance of selected structural composite lumber (SCL), namely laminated veneer lumber (LVL) and laminated strand lumber (LSL), in accordance with CAN/ULC S101 “Standard Methods of Fire Endurance Tests of Building Construction and Materials”.
