by Web Editor | Aug 30, 2017 | News
Engineered wood is also known as man-made wood or composite wood, and these are quite popular in recent times due to their cost effective and ecofriendly properties. These woods are formed of composite materials manufactured by binding the strands, fibers and particles all together with the help of suitable adhesives. These engineered woods can be made by utilizing wastes such as sawmill waste, rice straw, sugarcane bagasse, wheat straw and other wood wastes thus making them cost effective and environmentally friendly. Engineered wood is mainly used as a substitute to hardwood and concrete.
In many construction building projects, the products of engineered wood are used as an alternative of steel in beams. One of the advantages offered by engineered wood products is that it can be designed as per the demand and custom specifications of the end user. The main users of engineered wood products are construction developers, architects, designers etc. Promotion of green life and regulations concerning deforestation has led the global engineered wood market to expand with a decent pace.
Government norms and regulations such as Bharat stage emission standards or European emission standards regarding CO2 emissions are driving the market for engineered wood at whole different level. Owing to the factors like cost efficiency, enhanced quality, waste reduction and environmentally friendly nature, the engineered wood market is expected to witness significant growth in the market. There are certain innovations in the technologies and machining systems have been developed in order to improve the efficiency and quality of the products which are expected to further drive growth of the market.
Although the global engineered wood market has potential opportunities in the future still the manufacturers of engineered wood products face some challenges regarding durability and fire resistant properties of engineered wood products. There are certain adhesives like Urea-formaldehyde used in the manufacturing of engineered wood products which are quite toxic. Also some products such as particleboard may not be suitable for outdoor use as they are more prone to humidity. The ongoing developments regarding advanced grading and better material selection techniques is expected to result in improved definition of timber quality and efficient performance of the products.
From LANEWS.org: https://www.lanews.org/growing-industrialization-will-influence-the-engineered-wood-market-growth-2017-2027/
by Web Editor | Jan 18, 2017 | News
Mass timber is sprouting up in cities in North America and abroad. After years of feasibility studies and design proposals, buildings six stories or taller constructed primarily from pre-engineered wood products are being considered in cities around the world.
In London, one proposal, called the Splinter, would rise to 100 stories. In Chicago, Perkins+Will (in collaboration with Thornton Tomasetti and the University of Cambridge) has designed an 80-story high-rise with 300 duplex apartments. If built, River Beech—a key component of P+W’s master plan for the Riverline development—would be made almost entirely from mass timber.
So-called “plyscrapers” are still a tiny sliver of nonresidential construction. In the past five years, only 17 buildings seven stories or taller have been completed worldwide, mostly in Europe and Canada. Six more have started construction, according to the American Wood Council.
Mass production of timber for high-rise construction is still in its infancy in North America. Specifying these products in the U.S. faces resistance from insurers, regulators, and code officials. Steel fabricators and concrete suppliers disparage mass timber for taller buildings on the grounds of safety and durability.
Proponents cite the speed at which tall buildings can be constructed using pre-engineered wood and mass timber’s ability to sequester carbon. Joey-Michelle Hutchison, RA, LEED AP BD+C, CSBA, Associate Vice Principal, CallisonRTKL, says, “The role of mass wood is going to grow because of the demand for sustainable design.” Researchers from Yale and the University of Washington, in a study published in the Journal of Sustainable Forestry (March 28, 2014), postulated that using wood substitutes for constructing buildings (and bridges) could save 14–31% of global CO2 emissions.
From Building Design + Construction: https://www.bdcnetwork.com/mass-timber-what-heck-wow
by Web Editor | Oct 24, 2016 | News
Wood has a largely favorable environmental effect. A study of the National Research Programme “Resource Wood” recommends using wood more widely as a source of energy and as a building material.
The study examined the overall environmental impact of wood in Switzerland, analyzing the value chain from cutting trees to recycling wood or burning it, including the manufacture of semi-finished products such as paper, boards and pellets for heating purposes. Wood manufacturing is a high profile industry in Switzerland, home to suppliers familiar in the U.S. such as IGP power coating, Michael Weinig machinery, Jowat adhesives, Swiss Chrono laminate panel, and Lamello.
The study indicates that the sustainable use of wood can contribute to meeting our needs in terms of energy and raw materials with a smaller footprint than other resources.
The study estimates that the use of wood in Switzerland leads to a reduction in CO2 emissions of between 2.0 and 3.1 million tons per year – in comparison, Switzerland emitted a total of 52.6 million tons in 2013. Replacing gas or oil with wood accounts for two thirds of the estimated reduction. The last third is linked to construction and furniture production where wood replaces materials with a high carbon footprint such as cement, steel, aluminum and plastics.
Conducted in the context of the National Research Programme “Resource Wood” (NRP 66), the study based its analysis on the one hand on comprehensive statistics of material flows (origin, use and disposal of wood) that were compiled by the federal offices in particular. On the other hand, it referred to several databases evaluating the life cycle of products. “We considered different environmental impacts, in particular in relation to climate change, energy consumption, air pollution and loss of biodiversity”, explains Florian Suter, first author of the study and doctoral student at the Chair of Ecological Systems Design at ETH Zurich.
From Woodworking Network: https://www.woodworkingnetwork.com/wood/panel-supply/using-wood-more-widely-building-and-energy-helps-environment-swiss-researchers?ss=news,news,woodworking_industry_news,news,almanac_market_data,news
by Web Editor | Feb 10, 2016 | News
Last month we saw cross-laminated timbers installed at the Albina Yard project in Portland. It was the first use of U.S.-produced CLT in a building-wide structural system.
The first level of CLT (4,000 square feet) on Albina Yard went up in fewer than four hours. Last week, the second level was installed by a crew of seven in under two hours. Pretty remarkable, considering the contractor says it would have taken at least twice as many people two days or more to frame the same amount of floor space using traditional methods. Albina Yard is a four-story, 16,000-square-foot creative office project in north Portland. Besides its snazzy design by LEVER Architecture, the project is most notable for being tangible evidence that the U.S. CLT industry is officially off the ground.
There’s been a lot of buzz around CLT and mass timber in general over the past several months in Oregon and around the country — and rightly so. Besides drastically improved speed of construction (and the savings that go with that), mass timber offers significant environmental benefits. This includes tremendous carbon-storing capacity. Half the dry weight of wood is carbon. It got there when the trees were growing and absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. That carbon remains locked up for as long as the wood remains in use (a nine-story wood structure in China is now 959 years old—nearly a millennium). The new trees planted to replace those that were harvested start the carbon cycle all over again.
According to a quick, back-of-the-napkin calculation, Albina Yard, which is small by commercial construction standards, stores about 80.5 metric tons of carbon. That’s equivalent to offsetting 295 metric tons of CO2 emissions.
A larger Portland mass timber building, Clay Creative (60,000 square feet), stores more than 1 million pounds of carbon. Its total of 457.5 metric tons offsets 1,678 metric tons of CO2 emissions. “An additional 3,574 metric tons of CO2 emissions were avoided by using wood rather than concrete and steel,” says Dr. Jim Bowyer, an expert on the subject at Dovetail Partners, Inc.
From the Oregon Forest Resources Institute: https://oregonforests.org/blog/mass-timber-rising
