Building a Wood-Concrete Floor Mockup Bench

Building a Wood-Concrete Floor Mockup Bench

As part of their independent studies, two BCT students, Henry Braley and Loran Kaleci (with help from fellow student Rommel Cordova-Fiori and shop manager Dan Pepin), this semester built an 8 ft bench for Holdsworth Hall. This bench (while arguably extremely overdesigned) serves as a mockup of the wood-concrete composite floor construction that will be in the new (Integrated) Design Building. As shown in the diagram below, it consists of a three-layer cross-laminated timber (CLT) slab, which we generously received from Nordic EWP (thanks!). Above it is a 3/4 inch layer of rigid insulation and a 3 inch cast-in-place concrete topping. The concrete and the wood layers are connected rigidly with glued-in shear "HBV" connectors by TiComTec from Germany (thanks for those, too!), making both act as a single composite element. If you want to learn more about this technology, check out this research spotlight. BCT has been researching this technology for quite a while now and we are excited to see it in a real building on campus soon. The floors...
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BCT’s Peggi Clouston Speaks About “Emerging Technologies in Wood and Bio-Based Building Products”

The concluding talk of this semester's impromptu BCT lecture series “Building with Wood” was delivered November 21 by our very own Dr. Peggi Clouston. After covering the many benefits of wood and other bio-based materials (such as bamboo), she illustrated several of her research projects that featured mainly composite applications of these materials in structures. Her talk followed Nic Clark from KLH. Dr. Clouston teaches courses in structural wood design, material mechanics and bio-based composites to students of construction technology, architecture, and engineering. Her research focuses on modeling and characterizing the probabilistic mechanical behavior of structural bio-based composite materials as well as innovative wood products and systems. Links: Presentation (available soon) Bio-Based Building website Dr. Clouston's faculty page ...
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Nic Clark of KLH Speaks About Cross-Laminated Timber Buildings

Nic Clark of KLH Speaks About Cross-Laminated Timber Buildings

Nic Clark, Managing Director of KLH UK joined BCT on October 15 to present KLH's many projects worldwide in which they successfully used a new wood-based product, cross-laminated timber (CLT). Examples ranged from lowrise schools to residential buildings up to ten stories high. This lecture was the second installment in this semester's impromptu BCT lecture series “Building with Wood”, following Robert Malczyk of Equilibrium Consulting. KLH is the worldwide market-leading manufacturer of large-format glued laminated timber elements, especially Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) panel products. KLH and its subsidiary KLH UK has been involved in the construction of thousands of wood buildings, including the 8-story Stadthaus in London, UK and a recent 10-story apartment building in Melbourne, Australia. Links: KLH presentation KLH UK website KLH Austria website ...
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Clouston co-authors book chapter on laminated bio-based composites

Clouston co-authors book chapter on laminated bio-based composites

A recently published book titled "Bio-Based Composites for High-Performance Materials: From Strategy to Industrial Application" (published by CRC press) includes a chapter on "Characterization and Strength Modeling of Laminated Bio-Based Composites", which was co-authored by BCT-faculty Peggi L. Clouston, Sanjay R. Arwade, and Alireza Amini. See below for an excerpt on Google Books: Link: http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781482214482...
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Robert Malczyk speaks about engineered wood buildings

Robert Malczyk speaks about engineered wood buildings

Robert Malczyk, principal engineer of Vancouver-based firm Equilibrium Consulting, visited BCT last week to give a guest lecture on "Engineered Solutions in Wood". His lecture was the second installment in this semester's impromptu BCT lecture series “Building with Wood”, following Cassie Phillips of Weyerhaeuser. Fifteen years of design excellence and over a thousand successful projects have established Equilibrium as a leader in wood engineering worldwide. Their unique ability to take on complex structural challenges and find elegant, innovative, yet efficient solutions is exemplified in projects like the Frank Gehry-designed Art Gallery of Toronto, the Raleigh-Durham Airport roof structure, and the forthcoming IDB building at UMass Amherst, which will arguably be the most advanced modern wood structure in the eastern US. In reflecting upon the span of his own career, Robert not only gave career advice to the many students in attendance but also illustrated his firm's work in a detail-rich, visually stunning, and often very humorous manner. To learn more about Equilibrium's projects, follow the link at the...
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