Whole timber construction: A state of the art review
© 2019 Elsevier Ltd Forests worldwide are overstocked with small-diameter trees, putting them at increased risk of disease, insect attack, and destructive high-intensity wildfires. This overstocking is caused primarily by the low market value of these small-diameter trees, which are generally unsuit...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Elsevier BV
2021
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/135173 |
| _version_ | 1826188247804411904 |
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| author | Bukauskas, Aurimas Mayencourt, Paul Shepherd, Paul Sharma, Bhavna Mueller, Caitlin Walker, Pete Bregulla, Julie |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Building Technology Program |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Building Technology Program Bukauskas, Aurimas Mayencourt, Paul Shepherd, Paul Sharma, Bhavna Mueller, Caitlin Walker, Pete Bregulla, Julie |
| author_sort | Bukauskas, Aurimas |
| collection | MIT |
| description | © 2019 Elsevier Ltd Forests worldwide are overstocked with small-diameter trees, putting them at increased risk of disease, insect attack, and destructive high-intensity wildfires. This overstocking is caused primarily by the low market value of these small-diameter trees, which are generally unsuitable for sawn timber production and yield low prices when sold for biomass fuel, paper, or fibre-based engineered timber products. Considerable research in recent decades has demonstrated the potential for these small-diameter trees to be used in minimally processed round segments as structural elements in buildings, bridges, towers, and other infrastructure. Recent structures have also demonstrated the use of trees with major curvature and branching, which are also of low market value, in their round form as primary structural elements. Such “whole timber” construction serves as a low-cost, low-impact building system while providing revenue to forest owners to conduct harvests of low-value trees as required for sustainable forest management. This paper reviews developments in whole timber construction, presenting new non-destructive evaluation techniques, digital survey, design and fabrication methods, new processing technologies, and a diverse range of novel connection types and structural systems. It is shown that the key materials characterisation, processing, and design challenges for whole timber construction have been largely addressed, and that whole timber has the potential to be an important complement to other timber products in construction globally in the coming decades. It is recommended that future work focus on exploiting new digital technologies and scaling whole timber structural applications through increased prefabrication. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T07:56:48Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/135173 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T07:56:48Z |
| publishDate | 2021 |
| publisher | Elsevier BV |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1351732023-12-08T20:53:12Z Whole timber construction: A state of the art review Bukauskas, Aurimas Mayencourt, Paul Shepherd, Paul Sharma, Bhavna Mueller, Caitlin Walker, Pete Bregulla, Julie Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Building Technology Program Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Architecture © 2019 Elsevier Ltd Forests worldwide are overstocked with small-diameter trees, putting them at increased risk of disease, insect attack, and destructive high-intensity wildfires. This overstocking is caused primarily by the low market value of these small-diameter trees, which are generally unsuitable for sawn timber production and yield low prices when sold for biomass fuel, paper, or fibre-based engineered timber products. Considerable research in recent decades has demonstrated the potential for these small-diameter trees to be used in minimally processed round segments as structural elements in buildings, bridges, towers, and other infrastructure. Recent structures have also demonstrated the use of trees with major curvature and branching, which are also of low market value, in their round form as primary structural elements. Such “whole timber” construction serves as a low-cost, low-impact building system while providing revenue to forest owners to conduct harvests of low-value trees as required for sustainable forest management. This paper reviews developments in whole timber construction, presenting new non-destructive evaluation techniques, digital survey, design and fabrication methods, new processing technologies, and a diverse range of novel connection types and structural systems. It is shown that the key materials characterisation, processing, and design challenges for whole timber construction have been largely addressed, and that whole timber has the potential to be an important complement to other timber products in construction globally in the coming decades. It is recommended that future work focus on exploiting new digital technologies and scaling whole timber structural applications through increased prefabrication. 2021-10-27T20:11:05Z 2021-10-27T20:11:05Z 2019 2021-05-10T17:15:37Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/135173 en 10.1016/J.CONBUILDMAT.2019.03.043 Construction and Building Materials Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ application/pdf Elsevier BV Other repository |
| spellingShingle | Bukauskas, Aurimas Mayencourt, Paul Shepherd, Paul Sharma, Bhavna Mueller, Caitlin Walker, Pete Bregulla, Julie Whole timber construction: A state of the art review |
| title | Whole timber construction: A state of the art review |
| title_full | Whole timber construction: A state of the art review |
| title_fullStr | Whole timber construction: A state of the art review |
| title_full_unstemmed | Whole timber construction: A state of the art review |
| title_short | Whole timber construction: A state of the art review |
| title_sort | whole timber construction a state of the art review |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/135173 |
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