COMPARATIVE APPROACH OF WOOD ASSEMBLY JOINTS

for wooden laminated beams and panels

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Context

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• According to the Ministry of Ecology, Energy, Sustainable Development and Territory Planning, the sector of construction represents 42% of energy consumption in France – construction and exploiting of buildings. In the context of the Kyoto Protocol, industrialized countries have pledged to reduce their emissions. Wood therefore presents significant potential to save energy.

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• The decree of the Wood Construction Environment Plan aims to promote the use of wood in construction. One may wonder how such a political goal may apply at the urban-architectural scale.

 

 

• The exploitation, processing and implementation of wood require much less power than for other structural materials. As a result, the construction of a building in wood structure consumes two to three times less energy.

 

 

• Here is the essential role of the architect. What can be the improvements in the timber industry for wood architecture to get it greener? Can wood be used in any climatic, geological, structural, programmatic, economic conditions?

 

 

• I also wanted to test one of these innovative and promising assembly techniques. Through experimentation, the goal is to being a research-engineer. I chose the thermo-weld: a 100% wood connection which allows a 20% gain of resistance compared to a traditional pegging. It seemed interesting to acquire a simple implementation, controllable by all and firstly by a student in architecture.

 

 

• Even if these techniques are efficient, may they be used to improve thermic insulation of buildings? To densify the city? What are the architectural potentials of thermo-welded joints?

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Concept

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New types of innovative joints are currently in research phase in laboratories in private engineering or business schools. I thus made an inventory of these techniques and compared traditional joints via shear strength tests.