Grants and Contributions:

Grant or Award spanning more than one fiscal year. (2017-2018 to 2022-2023)

Wood structures are on the rise! Heightened public awareness regarding carbon footprints has dramatically increased the demand for sustainable construction and has initiated a resurgence in the use of wood in tall residential and non-residential buildings. Together with the development of new engineered wood products and advanced connectors, research focus is increasingly set upon wood-based hybrid structures that combine wood with other materials such as concrete.

Developing reliable design guidance for wood-based hybrid structures, an important step towards their successful implementation, poses critical research questions related to the structure’s performance. The long-term goal of my research program is to systematically address these questions and help lead the development of design guidance for wood-based hybrid structures through experimental, numerical and analytical investigations.

My initial NSERC DG was successful in developing a probabilistic design method for wood joints; it was critical for attracting students, leveraging significant additional research funding, and establishing my research group. Over the last five years, I have increasingly shifted my focus from the component level to the structural building level. Addressing research questions related to wood-based hybrid structures holistically will differentiate my research program from other efforts, which tend to focus on individual subsets of these problems.

During the next five years, my team will provide solutions to advance two immediately relevant research areas:
i) Wood-concrete-composite floors; and

ii) Wood-concrete structural load-resisting frames.

To explore the construction of tall residential and non-residential wood-concrete hybrid buildings, my research program will encompass the complete chain of design steps, specifically considering constructability in addition to structural behaviour. Conceptual, experimental, numerical, and analytical work will be combined, starting at the element level, continuing to the connections between them and the component level, and subsequently transferring the acquired knowledge to the structural system level.

The program will exploit the current momentum of initiatives focused on sustainability and innovative wood construction, leverage successful initiatives in my group, and shape future research agendas in hybrid wood construction provincially, nationally and globally. Ultimately, by taking leadership in this area, successful implementation of the program will have a decisive impact on the structural use of wood and will increase its market share in a variety of residential and non-residential buildings.