Currently, design of tall wood buildings is generally accomplished in the USA through the so-called alternate means process, with requires extensive testing, engineering analysis, and a stringent peer review process. As it pertains to cross-laminated timber (CLT), it is critical to develop effective performance prediction models, through laboratory testing elaborating on material behaviors (e.g. hygrothermal, vibrational, etc.) as well as monitoring data on the mid- to long-term performance of timber structures in situ. This paper presents the scope and preliminary outcomes of a project aiming to cross reference laboratory research and in-situ monitoring to establish a holistic performance-monitoring protocol for mass timber buildings; this protocol can later serve to define standards for mid- to long-term monitoring as well as to develop guidelines for the design of mass timber structures.
Mass timber construction systems, incorporating engineered wood products as structural elements, are gaining acceptance as a sustainable alternative to multi-story concrete or steel-frame structures. The relative novelty of these systems brings uncertainties on whether these buildings perform long-term as expected. Consequently, several structural health monitoring (SHM) projects have recently emerged to document their behavior. A wide and systematic use of this data by the mass timber industry is currently hindered by limitations of SHM programs. These limitations include scalability, difficulty of data integration, diverse strategies for data collection, scarcity of relevant data, complexity of data analysis, and limited usability of predictive tools. This perspective paper envisions the use of avatars as a Web-based layer on top of sensing devices to support SHM data and protocol interoperability, analysis, and reasoning capability and to improve life cycle management of mass timber buildings. The proposed approach supports robustness, high level and large-scale interoperability and data processing by leveraging the Web protocol stack, overcoming many limitations of conventional centralized SHM systems. The design of avatars is applied in an exemplary scenario of hygrothermal data reconstruction, and use of this data to compare different mold growth prediction models. The proposed approach demonstrates the ability of avatars to efficiently filter and enrich data from heterogeneous sensors, thus overcoming problems due to data gaps or insufficient spatial distribution of sensors. In addition, the designed avatars can provide prediction or reasoning capability about the building, thus acting as a digital twin solution to support building lifecycle management.
Moisture Monitoring Data of Mass Timber Elements During Prolonged Construction Exposure: The Case of the Forest Science Complex (Peavy Hall) at Oregon State University
The paper reports on the activities of the RILEM technical committee “Reinforcement of Timber Elements in Existing Structures”. The main objective of the committee is to coordinate the efforts to improve the reinforcement practice of timber structural elements. Recent developments related to structural reinforcements can be grouped into three categories: (i) addition of new structural systems to support the existing structure; (ii) configuration of a composite system; and (iii) incorporation of elements to increase strength and stiffness. The paper specifically deals with research carried out at the Bern University of Applied Sciences Switzerland (BFH), the University of Minho Portugal (UniMinho), and the University of Trento Italy (UNITN). Research at BFH was devoted to improve the structural performance of rounded dovetail joints by means of different reinforcement methods: i) self-tapping screws, ii) adhesive layer, and iii) a combination of selftapping screws and adhesive layer. Research at UNITN targeted the use of “dry” connections for timber-to-timber composites, specifically reversible reinforcement techniques aimed at increasing the load-bearing capacity and the bending stiffness of existing timber floors. At UniMinho, double span continuous glulam slabs were strengthened with fibre-reinforced-polymers. All three examples demonstrate the improved structural performance of timber elements after reinforcing them.
The George W. Peavy Forest Science Complex, or “Peavy Hall,” is a mass-timber university building that is the subject of a structural health monitoring (SHM) program to create a comprehensive building performance dataset. The building substructure consists of cross-laminated timber (CLT)-concrete composite floors, a mass plywood panel (MPP) roof system, and the world's first application of CLT post-tensioned (PT) self-centering shear walls. This document reports on static and hygrothermal data collected during the final ten months of building construction that were used to validate a proposed methodological approach to SHM for mass-timber buildings under construction, described in A Methodological Approach for Structural Health Monitoring of Mass-Timber Buildings Under Construction [1]. These data, available in the repository at https://osf.io/jdz6y/, include wood moisture content of CLT, MPP, and glulam structural components, horizontal and vertical displacements of axially loaded CLT panels, tension loss of PT steel rods within CLT self-centering walls, and indoor and outdoor environmental conditions such as temperature, relative humidity, rain quantities, wind speeds, as well as wind directions. Additionally, data figures and analysis coding files are included in the repository to further define processes and allow for potential use of the analysis tools for similar projects.
+at+Oregon+State+University){kind=link}
