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Component Manufacturing dverti$er
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Don’t Forget! You Saw it in the
April 2017 #10213 Page #76
Mass Timber Construction – Building for the Future By Fred Tai, P.Eng., Engineering Manager – Canada, Simpson Strong-Tie®
The future is here. It is common knowledge that wood is a renewable and environmentally friendly building material. There are two types of wood-framing methods in North America. The most common method for residential construction is light-frame construction using either balloon-framing or platform-framing methods. Standardized dimensional lumber has become the dominant building material in light-frame construction because of its economy. The other method is heavy-timber construction, which often uses large solid-wood sections for nonresidential construction, such as for storage, mercantile and industrial buildings. In Europe, there is a trend to create larger “laminated” wood sections using the more traditional standardized dimensional lumber of the 1990s. This trend culminated in what is now classified as cross-laminated timber, or CLT. CLT can be used to create floor panels and roof panels. In North America, this is classified either as cross-laminated timber (CLT) or generically as mass timber. CLT is essentially multiple layers of wood panels. Each layer of wooden panels is laid crosswise on the one before at approximately a 90° angle and glued using a polyurethane adhesive to increase the stability of the entire panel. Typical thickness of the individual boards can vary from 3/8” to 2” thick. Typical board width can vary from 2-3/8” to 9-1/2” wide. CLT panels are fabricated and marketed from 3-ply CLT up to 7-ply CLT. CLT manufacturers normally publish characteristic properties for their panels – such as bending strength, shear strength, modulus of elasticity and panel stiffness – to assist Designers in specifying these products.
A Cross Laminated Timber Handbook has been published by FPInnovations in Canada as an introduction to CLT, which can be downloaded for free on their website. The American Wood Council has a self-study guide on CLT that is also available for download on their website.
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