Category Archives: Advanced Structures

Collaboration Yields U.S. Patent for Green Building Materials

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University of Colorado Denver (CU) professor and architect Julee Herdt, in collaboration with John Hunt of the Forest Products Laboratory (FPL), and Kellen Schauermann, architect, CU alumnus and research assistant, recently received a patent for environmental construction materials.

BioSIPs structural panels for wall, floor, and roof constructions.

The patent includes software and material science for converting 100 percent waste fibers, such as post-consumer wastepaper, agriculture residues, flowers, hemp, wood scraps, noxious weeds, dead trees, and other unwanted cellulose, into high-strength construction boards.  Using the technology, these dense yet lightweight and strong boards are bent and flexed into a virtually limitless array of shapes, from flat to complex, for making energy-efficient, non-off-gassing building materials, and buildings. The software also allows for associated manufacturing, economic, and recycling scenarios to be studied while the waste fiber eco-products are being designed. Continue reading →

Turning Up the Heat: Fires Test Performance of Tall Wood Buildings

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Wood buildings provide an array of economic and environmental benefits. Interest in capitalizing on those benefits by constructing mid- to high-rise buildings using cross-laminated timber (CLT) is growing. CLT is made from layers of dried lumber boards stacked in alternating direction at 90-degree angles, glued and pressed to form solid panels. These panels have exceptional strength and stability and can be used as walls, roofs, and floors. Additionally, calculations have shown that a seven-inch floor made of CLT has a fire resistance of two hours.

In order for wood structures to rise above six stories without special building official permission, changes to the International Building Code are needed. It’s a tall order, but researchers from the Forest Service’s Forest Products Laboratory (FPL) recently completed a series of fire tests that will address concerns about fire performance of wood buildings and help take them to new heights. Continue reading →

The Future of Wood Products: An Interview on Innovation

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Pallet Enterprise, the leading pallet and sawmill magazine in America, recently talked with World Neih, national program leader for Forest Products and Wood Utilization for the U.S. Forest Service in Washington, D.C.

The recently published article follows a question-and-answer format, and Neih describes the latest developments in wood technology and product development, and how these innovations develop new markets for wood.

Many of the developments Neih refers to, from nanocellulose to cross-laminated timber, are advancing thanks to research here at the Forest Products Laboratory.  The future of wood products presents countless opportunities, and we’re proud to help lead the way.

Technology Helps Turn Salvaged Trees into Moneymakers

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When insect scourges run rampant through forested ecosystems they can leave behind entire stands of dead and dying trees – especially if that scourge is the spruce budworm. In the Upper Midwest, where the spruce budworm infests forests on a cyclic 30-50 year pattern, forest managers oftentimes use salvaged logs from the dead and dying trees to produce low-value wood products, such as wood pulp, or merely count the dead trees as a loss and leave them standing.

Spruce budworm mortality,
Chequamegon–Nicolet
National Forest, Summer
2014 (Steven Katovich, USDA
Forest Service, Bugwood.org).

But Forest Products Laboratory (FPL) researchers developed ways to evaluate the quality of salvaged wood and sort out the higher-quality wood for production of cross-laminated timber (CLT) – a high-value wood product that can increase forest revenues. “We’re at the point of demonstrating commercially available technologies,” said FPL engineer Robert Ross, “and the idea that we can take high-grade material out [of dead tree stands].” Continue reading →

Environmental Building Declarations: Analyzing a Structure from Cradle to Grave

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(The following is a news item from the Athena Institute)

The Design Building at U.Mass Amherst continues an emerging trend in sustainable building transparency

Design Building on the Amherst campus of the University of Massachusetts. (Credit: Leers Weinzapfel Associates Architects Inc.)

The USDA Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory, in cooperation with US WoodWorks, engaged the Athena Institute to prepare an environmental building declaration (EBD) for the Design Building on the Amherst campus of the University of Massachusetts. This is a new four-story 87,573 square-foot home for three departments: Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning, and Building Construction Technology. The cross-laminated timber building, designed by Leers Weinzapfel Associates Architects with structural design engineer Equilibrium Consulting, was completed in January 2017. Continue reading →