Connection Solutions for Modern Wood Buildings

摘要

The use of wood as a structural material continues to grow far beyond traditional applications such as single-family homes and buildings up to four stories. Although recent attention has focused on the possibility of wood high-rises, wood's cost-effectiveness, versatility and light carbon footprint are already making it a material of choice for an expanding range of building types-from innovative public, educational and corporate structures that utilize mass timber products as their main architectural expression, to five-story (and higher) multi-family projects built with dimension lumber using long-established techniques. An essential element common to all of these buildings is effective connections. In wood buildings, effective connections provide strength, stiffness, stability and ductility. They are critical to building performance-under regular loads, and especially during extreme events such as hurricanes and earthquakes. According to post-disaster surveys, structural failures during these events are often due to faults in connection design or assembly.