Measuring Fire Safety Performance: A Comparative Experimental Study on Dovetail Massive Wooden Board Elements and Cross-Laminated Timber

Abstract

Adhesives and metal connectors play a critical role in the content of engineered wood products (EWPs). Though, the usage of adhesives can create challenges in terms of sustainability and recyclability because of toxic gas emissions. Metal fasteners are also critical to EWPs, but adversely affect end-of-life disposal, reusability, and recyclability. There is an alternative that is entirely pure wood, dovetail massive wooden board elements (DMWBEs) without adhesive and metal fasteners. In this paper, an experimental comparative fire-resistance study with crosslaminated timber (CLT) was conducted. Model scale test samples of 200 mm thickness, 950 mm width, and 950 mm length for CLT and DMWBE were tested in vertical position according to EN 1363-1. The charring performance of the DMWBE was found to be very similar to solid timber the charring rate being only slightly higher than that of solid timber. The char front was located in the third of the five lamella layers, but no flames or hot gases were observed on the unexposed side. With the tested lamella thickness, dovetail detail was able to effectively prevent the char fall-off. CLT specimens had a clear increase in the charring rate value due to the char fall-off of the first lamellae layer.

An Experimental Comparison of Airborne Sound Insulation between Dovetail Massive Wooden Board and Cross-Laminated Timber Elements

“…The significance of this research extends to the domain of EWPs by introducing an innovative and environmentally sustainable alternative in the form of DMWBEs. DMWBEs represent a substantial advancement in the field due to their ability to offer improved sound insulation and fire performance [20,21] while simultaneously reducing the overall environmental impact associated with traditional building materials. This is primarily achieved through the unique attributes of DMWBEs, such as their composition of pure wood, completely devoid of adhesives or metal connections, which are known to have negative environmental implications.…”