Mono-Material Solid-Timber Construction

Associated Project 15 (AP 15)

IntCDC Associated Project 15
LOW-COST, HIGH-INSULATION, LAYER-REDUCED, MONO-MATERIAL, ADHESIVE-FREE, DIGITALLY-FABRICATED SOLID-TIMBER CONSTRUCTION 

Wood is a versatile, easily machinable construction material, and its relatively good thermal insulation properties allow it to be used as a building envelope when appropriately processed. It therefore offers a sustainable, locally available raw material for intelligent milling and joining technology to meet the requirements of current building standards. This means that wood has the potential to provide weather protection, thermal insulation and load-bearing capacity from a single building material. 

In the previous project (Zukunft Bau SWD-10.08.18.7-15.59), these properties were successfully demonstrated and production processes have already been successfully implemented. The thermal insulation of a solid wood wall was shown to be significantly increased by a series of slits sawn perpendicular to the heat flow through the envelope. High-precision manufacturing generates airtight connections between the individual elements, and high-performance structural connection details enable load-bearing corner joints and thus a flexible design language. By concentrating all these functions in a single type of element, the number of secondary operations can be reduced to a minimum. The complexity and multi-parameter performance of the wood component allows for simple solutions in the surrounding processing steps, reducing the overall effort required for the fabrication and construction of the buildings. 

These properties are now being expanded to an optimised system for multi-storey residential and office buildings. By further developing the timber profile and adapting the milling process for integration into standard wood processing equipment on an industrial scale, both the production efficiency and the building physics performance of the building component should be improved. The airtightness of the on-site joints of the prefabricated modules is to be improved by the formation of a novel in-situ joint detail, and the use of a novel type of metal oxide treatment as a durable and maintenance-free wood protection may eliminate the need for external cladding.

 

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Prof. Achim Menges
Institute for Computational Design and Construction (ICD), University of Stuttgart

RESEARCHERS

Dr. techn. Felix Amtsberg (ICD)
Dr.-Ing. Tobias Schwinn (ICD)
Oliver A. Bucklin (ICD)

PARTNERS

Prof. Hans-Christian Möhring, Kamil Güzel, Institut für Werkzeugmaschinen (IfW), University of Stuttgart

FUNDING

Bundesinstitut für Bau-, Stadt- und Raumforschung (BBSR) im Bundesamt für Bauwesen und Raumordnung, Innovationsprogramm Zukunft Bau
“Kostengünstige, Hochdämmende, schichtenreduzierte, sortenreine, klebstofffreie, digital gefertigte Holzmassivbauweise”, grant ID: SWD-10.08.18.7-20.

PEER-REVIEWED PUBLICATIONS

  1. 2023

    1. Bucklin, O., Müller, T., Amtsberg, F., Leistner, P., & Menges, A. (2023). Analysis of thermal Transmittance, air Permeability, and hygrothermal behavior of a solid timber building envelope. Energy and Buildings, 299, 113629. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2023.113629

  2. 2021

    1. Bucklin, O., Menges, A., Krieg, O., Drexler, H., Rohr, A., & Amtsberg, F. (2021). Mono-Material Wood Wall: Digital Fabrication of Performative Wood Envelopes. Journal of Facade Design and Engineering, 9(1), Article 1. https://doi.org/10.7480/jfde.2021.1.5398.

    

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