Novel wood panel for efficient and healthy built environment

Research Project, 2021 – 2024

We are seeing escalating urbanization and the need for more constructions. Meanwhile, the construction industry has been a major contributor to the global greenhouse gas emissions. The requirements to constructions are expanding its scope beyond structural safety to environmental, economic and social impact.
The project aims to develop a novel optimization scheme for cross laminated timber (C LT) panels for loadbearing structures by introducing air gaps between the timber lamellas. The optimization is achieved by minimizing the volume of timber while ensuring the structural capacity, moisture safety and low environmental impact.
Alternatives of the lamella composition are developed based on specific design rules for moisture and structural safety initially for west coast Sweden conditions, which considers required loadbearing capacity, panel thickness and local climate. The hygrothermal and structural performances of those are numerically modelled, and the
models will be validated by physical tests with small- and full- scale samples. The validated models will then be applied to an iteration process on environmental impact, moisture safety and structural capacity simulation, which will find the panel configuration with minimum amount of timber under given conditions.
The outputs of the project are optimized panel configuration alternatives for various conditions for Sweden and documentation of the optimization scheme for the application by practitioners beyond Sweden.