ADVANTAGES OF WOODEN STRUCTURES

Wood

Swimming pools

Wood

Steel

Equestrian sports arenas

Wood

Steel

Covered skating rinks

Wood

Steel

Illuminated shopping malls

Wood

Steel

Chemical resistance

When using wooden glued structures in salt storage facilities, the cost of operating costs and the risks of latent corrosion with possible accidental consequences are lower than when using steel structures. To protect wooden structures in a chemically aggressive environment, simpler protective compounds (transparent varnishes) are required compared to steel structures.

Fire resistance

When designing load-bearing structures (regardless of material), design standards may impose two fire safety requirements - ensuring the specified fire resistance limit and fire hazard class. In simple terms, the fire resistance limit is responsible for the time the structural strength is maintained in fire, and the fire hazard class is responsible for its ability to spread fire.
Wooden structures of a large span without any protection have very high fire resistance limits (due to low thermal conductivity and constant charring rate at any stage of combustion) and are able not to collapse in fire for several hours, but at the same time they have a low fire hazard class (wood burns and spreads flame).
Unprotected steel structures have opposite properties - they quickly collapse in fire (low fire resistance limits), but do not burn themselves.
Thus, given that in buildings with large-span structures, the main fire load is formed by interior items and decoration, and not by load-bearing structures, wooden structures are safer for evacuating people. At the same time, of course, in buildings with standardized fire safety requirements, both steel and wooden structures require fire retardant treatment, but its cost in steel frames is usually higher, other things being equal.

Seismic resistance

It can be stated that wooden structures have significant seismic resistance. This is facilitated by the lower weight of wooden structures and the increased resistance of wood to seismic impacts (due to an increase in strength up to 40% for short-term impacts), as well as the plastic nature of the deformation of most types of nodal joints of wooden structures.

1

Mineral wool 0.035

2

Pine wood across and along the fibers, respectively 0.09 and 0.18

3

Reinforced concrete 1.69

4

Steel 58

Thermal resistance

The coefficient of thermal conductivity of wood is low and excludes the formation of “cold bridges” when structural elements are located inside the thermal protection layer and the associated condensate, which simplifies design solutions

For example, the coefficient of thermal conductivity in (W/m*K):

Durability

Wooden structures have normalized indicators of strength, rigidity, reliability and durability, they have extensive experience in operation in buildings for a wide range of purposes. Over the past 20 years, more than a thousand objects have been built in Russia using large-span wooden structures, some of which compete in their performance with similar structures in the world. The load-bearing capacity of glued wooden structures is ensured by reliable understanding of the behavior of wood under various influences (including taking into account the time factor), proven design techniques, gluing and processing technologies for wooden structures. The durability of wooden structures is ensured by predicting the design characteristics of the material at the design stage, as well as through the use of modern protective compounds with a long service life between updates.