Wood vs. unreinforced concrete

Gould more Haitian lives have been saved?

tTt"r woRLD HAS wATCHED in honor I the previously unimaginable death and destruction from the Haiti earthquake in January. The latest statistics from Haiti indicate 230.000 dead.

225,000 collapsed homes, and 25900 office buildings destroyed.

As they watch crushed bodies being pulled from under the huge slabs of concrete, many U.S. archi-

Wooden High-Rise Turns Heads

The construction of the Fondaction office building in the heart of Quebec City, P.Q., is generating more than passing local interest.

The six-story commercial structure, featuring heavy timber frame construction designed and provided by Nordic Structures, is the first of its kind built in Canada. Made of black spruce glue-laminated beams, columns and decking, the unique construction technology featured in this project is paving the way for similar alternative building projects across North America.

While wood-frame construction has been limited by code to four stories in the past, designing the building with heavy timbers assured local building officials that while structurally equal to steel and concrete construction that is the norm for commercial construction. heaw wood timber construction offeri superior fire resistance, acoustic properties, and insulation values.

An additional bonus for this LEED Gold project is the encapsulation of over I million pounds of carbon, locked into the wood for the life of the structure.

Enviro=Lam, a unique smallblock layup process exclusive to Nordic Engineered Wood, is evi- dent in all the glulam components comprising the structure. "The black spruce trees we harvest take 90 years to achieve maturity, yet still only average 4-112" in diameter over their 70' length," said Albert Renaud, vice president of Nordic Engineered Wood. "It is essential that we utilize all the tree" including the tips, if we are going to extract all the value that is locked in the fiber. Enviro=Lam allows us to tects, contractors, and dealers are asking the same question: "How many lives could have been saved if more Haitian buildings had been built with lighter-weight wood framing?" get lSVo more fiber yield than traditionally possible, making it one of the greenest building materials out there."

Nordic harvests on 2,000,000 acres of land in northern Quebec, an area comparable to the state of Connecticut, with extreme attention to the environment. In addition to its ISO 14001 Environmental Reforestation certification, Nordic obtained FSC certification in February 2009, the first privately held EWP producer to do so. Nordic harvests roughly l7o of this

A survey of housing specifiers indicates positive views concerning approved construction with framing lumber, laminated veneer lumber, plywood, structural glued laminated timber (glulam), I-joists, and other wood structural materials.

Michael Caldwell, executive v.p. of the American Institute of Timber Construction, notes that properly connected and anchored wood frame construction has a lower mass which means that it can resist lateral forces better than unreinforced concrete construction.

In the 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan, 600 people were killed, but houses built to North American woodframed construction standards were only slightly affected.

A report from the Canadian Wood Council on wood framing Performance during the 1994 Northridge, Ca., earthquake said, "Single-family dwellings suffered minimal structural damage to elements critical to the safety of occupants."

The Canadians also note that wood is the only major building material that is renewable. The area of North American Forests has increased by 20 million acres since 1970.

One of the most recent demonstrations of wood framing's durability in earthquakes is a mid-rise, wood-frame test building built to withstand major quakes and other natural disasters. Engineers from Colorado State University, Simpson Strong-Tie, and the Forest Products Laboratory cooperated on the world's largest "shake table test," which simulated the ground motion of a major earthquake on a seven-story, 40x60 condo tower with 23 living units. The 40-second test was the equivalent of a 7 .5 magnitude earthquake.

The test is significant because of its implications for builders, architects and dealers. Normally, the building industry rarely permits wood-frame buildings in excess of five stories in earthquake-prone areas. This test could increase the height permitted for wood framing. boreal forest annually, ensuring a sustainable source of wood.

CSU civil engineering Professor John van de Lindt, who coordinated the test, said, "The building performed so well in the test and had so little damage that it validated the design philosophy of other universities for earthquake engineering simulation."

The building was tested three times with simulated quakes ranging from 6.7 andto 7.5 on the Richter scale.

The organizations that partnered on the test commented, "Wood performed well under seismic loading. It is a ductile material and the wood is relatively light weight. The test showed that midrise timber structures could be designed and built for high seismic zones as an alternative to steel or concrete, in addition to wood's cost and aesthetic advantages."

Nordic Engineered Wood manufactures the components in Chibougamau, P.Q., where it recently completed a $12-million mill expansion featuring state of the art milling and finishing equipment dedicated to its glulam structures projects.

More Products in DeveloPment

In addition to redefining glulam technology with its Enviro=Lam process, Nordic is currently developing X-Lam, a cross-laminated timber panel, which offers additional benefits for commercial construction' While similar to the decking used in the Fondaction building, X=Lam will allow for greater clearspan floor applications in commercial structures, as well as load bearing walls where lateral resistance to shear is critical.

Lighter and easier to work with than steel or concrete, CLTs enhance wood's superior resistance to seismic conditions, making them an ideal building material for construction in earthquake prone areas. CLTs are used extensively in Europe, where commercial wood construction exceeding nine stories is now becoming commonplace. Builders find the lighter weight and workability of CLTs reduce build times and construction costs.

Julie Frappier, director of technical services for Nordic Engineered Wood, BniHhgRoductsom

is a member of the APA Standards Committee on CLT, which held its first meeting March 11. Frappier is workins with the APA to create the design standard for CLTs, and is targeting this spring for the initial X=Lam product report.