Structural feasibility of a medium-rise timber office building

Abstract

Using timber as a structural material for commercial projects will certainly gain importance and popularity in the coming decades as more focus is placed on reducing environmental effects created by a dependence on steel and concrete in the construction industry. Timber is a clean alternative that despite its historical use is too often overlooked by designers when they are choosing materials for ordinary commercial projects like office buildings. This thesis presents a case for using timber as the primary structural material in a medium-rise office building (up to ten stories), where currently only concrete and steel are normally used. The study accomplishes this using a custom structural design for a typical office building and exploring the structural issues that presumably prohibit timber from being used more commonly. Such issues are strength capacity, stiffness, material reliability, natural defects, area of required material, fire protection, and constructability. Addressing these issues in terms of building codes and in general comparison to steel and concrete makes up the bulk of the feasibility study. Future work essential to completing the structural case for timber is also identified, and the study concludes that timber is indeed a viable alternative material in typical office building design. The motivation behind the thesis is one based on obtaining and sharing an introduction to a material that finds little application in traditional engineering education yet will grow to play a large role in the field of structural engineering in the coming age of sustainability-minded design.