High performing rails from CLT panel waste for advanced prefabricated volumetric timber structures – step 2

Category: Hypothesis testing projects

Today, a race is underway around the world to build the tallest building with a load-bearing timber structure. In Sweden and other Nordic countries there are examples of wooden buildings that can be included in the competition, but most experts agree that the large volume of buildings is in residential housing construction up to a maximum of 10 floors. In the last decade, this market segment has been of great interest to the traditional wooden house companies, which have a material-efficient construction method and high competence in prefabricated timber frame construction. When these wooden house builders want to build up to ten storey high residential buildings, a number of challenges arise. One of these is that in the short and medium term the house is deformed vertically due to, among other things, its dead load and imposed loads. The greatest deformation occurs in the weakest zones of the wood material, in the places where the wood material is loaded perpendicular to the fiber direction, e.g. in rails.

The current project aims to further develop the possibilities of using a sawn so-called CLT board at the places in the building where loading is applied perpendicular to the fiber direction. The board is sawn from residual products that arise during CLT production when openings, for example doors and windows, are cut out of rectangular CLT panels. These residual products are used today as biofuel but can hopefully instead be used in a long term cycle by being used in timber structures. The product will be tested as a rail in full-scale construction projects as well as in a laboratory environment. In addition, computational models shall be developed to simulate immediate response at load and long-term response when time dependent effects are included.

Participants

Derome Husproduktion, OBOS Bostadsutveckling, Karlstad University, Linnaeus University, Stora Enso and Vida Building.

Budget & time plan

The project’s total budget is 6,3 MSEK and the project runs during two years – between June 2022 and May 2024.

Read about High performing rails from CLT panel waste for advanced prefabricated volumetric timber structures – step 1.