Mass timber (MT) building systems are gaining momentum around the world, especially in Canada where Federal and Provincial governments encourage the greater use of wood in construction projects through various promotion programs such as GCWood Program. In the meanwhile, seismic design provisions in the 2020 National Building Code of Canada have been revised, resulting in significantly higher seismic loads for structures in many locations. Consequently, there is a need to develop new lateral load resisting systems that allow mass timber structures to better compete against their counterparts in steel, concrete and masonry. Building on the success of midply shear walls for wood-frame construction, a multi-year research project was initiated at FPInnovaitons to develop MT version of midply shear wall systems that have greater structural capacities, fire, and acoustical performance.
In the first year of this project, literature reviews were conducted to identify the code requirements on MT components and to survey the available LLRSs used in the MTstructures. Conceptual MT midply wall systems meeting structural, fire, and acoustical performance requirements were proposed. An advisory group meeting was held to evaluate the practicability of the proposed MT midply systems. In the next fiscal year, the proposed MT Midply will be optimised further according to the comments and suggestions from the advisory group. Analytical evaluation of the proposed MT Midply wall systems along with necessary tests will be conducted. Based on the evaluation, a go / no-go decision will be made as to whether the study should be continued for the proposed MT Midply.