Cross-laminated timber (CLT) is making waves across the construction industry, and builders are starting to see timber construction as a more feasible option.
To display CLT's resiliency compared to similar materials, the construction company Lendlease worked with the Karagozian & Case Inc. (KCI) to put the engineered wood through a series of blast tests.
Lendlease built the testing structures, each of which were exposed to successively larger blasts over a period of seven tests; two of the mock buildings were 27 feet tall with two-foot-tall parapets and window cutouts at 12 feet, and the third was 23 feet tall, with two-foot-tall parapets and window cutouts at 10 feet. Both “buildings” had 15-square-foot footprints.
After exposing the structures to 32 pounds, 67 pounds, and 199 pounds of TNT (with 610 pounds used for the last test), KCI concluded that for blast exposure, CLT was equivalent to the standard steel-studded wall. Because CLT panels contain multiple laminated layers, the remaining wood provides additional strength at the point of rupture. The load from the blast is also more evenly distributed owing to the panel’s support on all four sides, allowing the force to be evenly distributed towards the joints.
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