Robustness of tall timber buildings: an improved framework

Paper in proceeding, 2021

With the popularity of tall timber buildings seeing an unprecedented increase in the last decade, structural robustness is becoming a critical topic of interest, given the complexity of these new structures. While there exist a number of measures to design robust structures, all of them focus on the system behaviour of the structural components. This paper takes a step back from the current robustness practice and discusses an improved framework using a multi-level scale approach. The framework is first demonstrated qualitatively with the conceptual design of a robust tall timber building. A quantification method is presented, which utilises an average robustness index for multiple damage scenarios and compares the cost effectiveness of various conceptual improvements against a starting design. The improved framework will allow the designer to make informed decisions to increase the robustness of any structure effectively.