Timber Floors and Strengthening Techniques (Illustrated with a Numerical Example)

Abstract

The trend of renewing old masonry buildings and provision of new housing, public and other areas without using new building blocks is becoming increasingly important to ensure the conformity of the renovated buildings with the current technical regulations. One compliance aspect is the load-bearing function, which to a large degree depends on the floor structures. As old masonry buildings often have timber floors, the purpose of this article is to provide insight into the field of timber floor strengthening. Thus, the evolution of floor structures is briefly presented, and common types of timber floors are provided. Furthermore, the weight of different timber floor fillings is studied in relation to the prescribed imposed loads. Measures for strengthening old timber floors are introduced separately in view of vertical and horizontal strengthening. Additionally, a classic timber floor and a timber-concrete composite floor are analyzed regarding current building standards in the European Union, the Eurocodes.

Out-of-Plane Strengthening of Existing Timber Floors with Cross Laminated Timber Panels Made of Short Supply Chain Beech

“…Analysing the results in terms of slip moduli, the values assessed according to EC5 underestimates the experimental values expected from tests in similar timber-to-timber joints [19]. Consequently, even the bending stiffness is underestimated, due to the approximations of the method by [30] and on the presence of the interlayer [31,33], in agreement with other studies [35]. The three flexible cases K1, K2, K3, which represent three possible and realistic choices of screws spacing, were considered to evaluate their influence on the effective bending stiffness.…”