Timber Essay

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The environmental performance of timber has many advantages as a potential mass construction material. With focus on the environment and carbon emissions, building green has an increased importance in construction and will be ever so important in the future with sustainability at the forefront of any design. Timber products possess a number of environmental characteristics that allow it to be considered a renewable and sustainable product. CO2 is a leading indicator of global warming and when properly managed and harvested, trees remove carbon dioxide from the air by converting this gas into carbohydrates and water providing oxygen as a byproduct (Bland, 2005).

In a report produced by the Australian government, the importance of forests and wood products in relation to Australia's carbon balance was outlined and measures that can be taken to help reduce societies energy use. Australian forests have removed 38.5 billion tonnes or carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, about 70 times the annual net greenhouse gas emissions Australia produces and in 2004 plantation and commercial forests removed a net 43.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (Ximenes, Robinson and Wright, 2004). These figures show that by incorporating the use of wood products into more designs it will result in lower green house gas emissions than most other alternatives.

In comparison to conventional building materials such as reinforced concrete and steel, CLT is manufactured from sustainably managed forests. Production of CLT generally requires less energy to manufacture compared to conventional materials, as the timber grown to manufacture CLT absorb carbon and store it long term (BRE, 2011). In the figure below, gathered from the report by the...

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...ffness parameter.
It has been documented that within the panalised building system the main weak link is the junction of wall, floor and wall below. To alleviate the concentrated loads at these points, nails or screws are used to reinforce the bearing point (Popovski, Schneider and Shweinsteiger, 2010, pg5).
The overall strength of the design is also dependant on the duration of loading and the effects it has on the structure. The standards define the duration of load factors for five second, five minutes, five hours, five days, five months and 50+ years, with factors ranging from 1.00 for instantaneous actions such as wind gusts to 0.57 for permanent loads. It can be noted that the long term factor is the result of the significant strength decrease timber experience when subjected to loads for extended periods of time. (HB2.2-2003 p292)
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