Complex Stress States in Structural Birch Plywood

For structural engineers, the two most important design criteria are utility and safety. This is about making sure that a structural component is reliable enough not to endanger any of a building's users, while at the same time being as sustainably and efficiently designed as possible. In other words, an element must be safe enough to withstand the improbability and sufficiently cheap to be relevant for the design. Considering this, using a material such as wood instead of metal may prove to be a sustainable alternative for certain building components.

Author	Pontus Wedin
University	KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden

Timber can be designed to sustain high temperatures and fire; it has a high strength relative to its weight and is produced naturally. Furthermore, an engineered wood product such as birch plywood has proven very strong in structural applications, especially when glued. Therefore, birch plywood has great potential as a reliable material in structural components. In this work, a total of 24 specimens with birch plywood connections were tested experimentally.

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