Student: Vincent B. Staat
Supervisors: Arjan Habraken, Faas Moonen, Matthew Ferguson
29-08-2023
Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) is a viable alternative for concrete floors and walls. CLT allows for good load bearing capacity by having timber run in two different directions with one distinct major direction. While CLT floors show great potential, not every building application lends itself to having this one distinct major direction. In this research, an optimization method is proposed wherein the lay-up of the CLT floor is varied throughout the floor to better follow the flow of forces. An algorithm was set up that optimizes CLT floors based on the stresses and deflections in the floor. By using the algorithm it was found that for particular geometric, loading and support conditions, the optimized CLT floors could be made with 25% less material as compared to non-optimized CLT while still satisfying the implemented stress and deflection checks. The optimization method was set up from scratch and is in an early stage and thus more future research is required. It does however show that there is potential in optimizing CLT floors by locally varying the major direction.
Keywords: Cross Laminated Timber, Optimization, Rhino, Grasshopper, GSA, algorithm, timber, parametric design
Cite this
Local optimization of CLT floors: Optimization of Cross Laminated Timber floors through locally varying the major direction based on the geometry, support and loading conditions
Staat, V. B. (Author). 29 Aug 2023
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