Wood in Europe, especially in Germany, is a good available row material. It has a high load capacity and stiffness in comparison to the low death weight. Timber is traditionally used for bending beams and columns with low processing. Since it is a natural material, there are variations in properties and quality. There is a demand for homogenisation for using in modern engineering and for the exploitation of the good properties of timber. Therefore, the timber is sliced, sorted and remounted as glued laminated timber or even as veneer lumber, to eliminate defects, knots or cracks. For increased requirements in terms of load-carrying capacity and long spans, a hybrid composite beam made of glulam and highperformance materials was developed at the Bauhaus University Weimar in cooperation with a local SME.
The main material of the developed High-Tech Timber Beam is still glulam with more than 90 % of the girders volume. Replacing one or two lamellas at the bottom side of the glulam by laminated veneer lumber (LVL) allows a significant homogenization of the timber beams properties.
For upgrading the compression zone of the bending beam, the upper lamella of the glulam is replaced by a decking of polymer concrete (PC). This is made of a mineral mixture with a special grain-size distribution and a binder on base a of 2-component epoxy resin. The PC has a high compression strength and also a high stiffness because of its high rate of filling with mineral grits.