• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.269-282
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• 2015

Civil structures should be designed with the lowest cost and longest lifetime possible and without service failure. The efficient and sustainable use of materials in building design and construction has always been at the forefront for civil engineers and environmentalists. Timber is one of the best contenders for these purposes particularly in terms of aesthetics; fire protection; strength-to-weight ratio; acoustic properties and seismic resistance. In recent years, timber has been used in commercial and taller buildings due to these significant advantages. It should be noted that, since the launch of the modern building standards and codes, a number of different structural systems have been developed to stabilise steel or concrete multistorey buildings, however, structural analysis of high-rise and multi-storey timber frame buildings subjected to lateral loads has not yet been fully understood. Additionally, timber degradation can occur as a result of biological decay of the elements and overloading that can result in structural damage. In such structures, the deficient members and joints require strengthening in order to satisfy new code requirements; determine acceptable level of safety; and avoid brittle failure following earthquake actions. This paper investigates performance assessment and damage assessment of older multi-storey timber buildings. One approach is to retrofit the beams in order to increase the ductility of the frame. Experimental studies indicate that Sprayed Fibre Reinforced Polymer (SFRP) repairing/retrofitting not only updates the integrity of the joint, but also increases its strength; stiffness; and ductility in such a way that the joint remains elastic. Non-linear finite element analysis ('pushover') is carried out to study the behaviour of the structure subjected to simulated gravity and lateral loads. A new global index is re-assessed for damage assessment of the plain and SFRP-retrofitted frames using capacity curves obtained from pushover analysis. This study shows that the proposed method is suitable for structural damage assessment of aged timber buildings. Also SFRP retrofitting can potentially improve the performance and load carrying capacity of the structure.

• Journal of the Architectural Institute of Korea Structure & Construction
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• v.35 no.6
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• pp.153-164
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• 2019

The presence of thermal bridges in a building envelope cause additional heat loss which increases the heating energy. Given that a higher building insulation performance is required in these cases, the heat loss via thermal bridges is a high proportion of the total heat energy consumption of a building. For the dry exterior insulation system that uses mullions and transoms to fix insulation and exterior materials such as stone and metal sheet, the occurrence of thermal bridges at mullions and transoms is one of the main reasons for heat loss. In this study, a dry exterior insulation system using the truss insulation frame (TIF) was proposed as an alternative to metal mullions. To evaluate the building envelope performance, structural, air-leakage, water-leakage, fire-resistance, thermal, and condensation risk tests were conducted. In addition, the annual energy consumption associated with heating and cooling was calculated, including the linear thermal transmittance of the thermal bridges. As a result, the dry exterior insulation system using TIF achieved the allowable value for all tests. It was also determined that the annual heating load of a building was reduced by 36.7 % when the TIF dry exterior insulation system was used, relative to the dry exterior insulation system using steel pipes without additional insulations.