News
August 12, 2008
TRADA prize: important impact’ on timber frame
Buro Happold graduate engineer Benjamin Torrance has won the 2008 ‘TRADA Timber in Construction Student Prize' for his master's degree dissertation project, completed at Cambridge University.
The £1,000 prize, supported by wood for good, aims to recognise excellence and innovation in the use of timber in construction amongst university students of both engineering and architecture.
Benjamin's award-winning entry was a design for a timber-framed multi-storey car park, using larch glulam for the main structural elements with concrete-steel composite floor decks. The use of long span timber-concrete composite floors enabled column-free parking space to be achieved in a structure type usually dominated by steel and reinforced concrete, and enabled a significant reduction in the structure's embodied energy.
Dr Hugh Mansfield Williams, Technical Manager, Engineering & Product Services at TRADA Technology, said, ‘It is exciting to see designers considering timber for types of structure that are usually made of steel or concrete. The large spans and high loads inherent in car parks are clearly not an insurmountable obstacle to the use of timber. This is a radical and exciting design. Its use of Eurocode 5 is exactly the type of forward thinking we were hoping to encourage with this initiative.'
One of the advantages of the Eurocodes system for structures is a common basis of design for all materials, he added. ‘This means that it is easier to design structures using the most advantageous combinations of materials, without having to reconcile different design philosophies and the two winning projects both consider timber in combination with other materials.'
Runner-up this year was Kenneth Leitch who has graduated from Napier University with a BSc in Civil & Timber Engineering and now works for Oregon Timber Frame. His project centred on the performance of dowel-type fasteners to connect the timber sole plate to a concrete substrate in timber frame construction. The research underpinning the work assessed the performance of a range of dowel type fasteners and analysed the influencing factors of timber to concrete connections, while aiming to gain a better understanding of the behaviour of sole plate connections under load.
Dr Mansfield-Williams said, ‘Although the project itself did not involve a structure per se, it was an excellent piece of test work and its impact is clearly of importance to the timber frame industry. It also provided complementary information to that contained in Eurocode 5 for timber to steel connections.'
He added, ‘Overall, the judges were impressed with the high calibre of entries for this year's award. The winning entries will open up important avenues in development and design, which is one of the aims of the TRADA prize.'
The winners will be presented with their awards on TRADA's stand within the Timber Zone at Interbuild, at the NEC in Birmingham, at the end of October.
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