Altair > Case Studies > Designing for Sustainability: Reducing Carbon Footprint with Embedded Carbon for Large Scale, Hybrid Timber Structures

Designing for Sustainability: Reducing Carbon Footprint with Embedded Carbon for Large Scale, Hybrid Timber Structures

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Technology Category
  • Drones - VTOL & VTOL Hybrid Drones
  • Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Hybrid Cloud
Applicable Industries
  • Buildings
  • Construction & Infrastructure
Applicable Functions
  • Product Research & Development
Use Cases
  • Smart Campus
  • Structural Health Monitoring
About The Customer
Bush Bohlman & Partners is a Vancouver, Canada based structural engineering design firm known for their creative expertise in major engineering projects in Western Canada. Their portfolio includes hospitals, university campus buildings, government buildings, seismic retrofits, mass timber, and tall wood buildings. They are early adopters of mass timber structures and have extensive wood design experience to handle projects requiring the unique technical challenges faced when designing with engineered wood.
The Challenge
Bush Bohlman & Partners, a structural engineering design firm, was tasked with the structural analysis and timber design for the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) student plaza. The structure was to serve as a pedestrian and public transport user gateway for the institute, and needed to establish a strong campus identity with a biophilic design and demonstrable support for sustainable building practices. The hybrid mass timber structure consisted of a Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) canopy, CLT columns, and steel columns. The pedestrian comfort walkway needed to meet sustainability, reliability, and structural design requirements. The structure involved a pitched roof, skylight openings in the roof CLT panels, and supporting columns constructed from CLT and hollow structural steel. The engineers needed to maintain a current structural model, apply local timber design codes, and analyze the complex two-way bending behaviour of the cantilevering roof panels and irregular column layout.
The Solution
The engineers chose to use S-TIMBER to model and analyze the 3D structure. Altair collaborated with Bush Bohlman to ensure the correct modeling parameters were applied while simulating the structure. S-TIMBER was able to perform a hybrid analysis of the timber and steel elements in one operation and code-check the timber elements for code compliance. Using S-TIMBER’s built-in and customizable material databases allowed for a quick definition of the materials conforming to the proprietary CLT required. Modeling automation allowed for easier responses to structural changes resulting from design revisions. With the help of Altair’s technical support team, the engineers were able to overcome some technical design challenges using S-TIMBER strip line integration capabilities to extract the structural demands at junctions and supporting columns to design the timber connections and supports further.
Operational Impact
  • By using S-TIMBER, the engineers were able to simulate the complex two-way bending behaviour of the cantilevering roof panels and asymmetrical column layout. This allowed for changes to be analyzed and re-designed, without the need to manually design individual timber and steel elements. S-TIMBER’s design reports presented the design calculations concisely, yet transparently, for faster and easier reviews. A 3D visualization of the finished model was available for sharing with project partners. The engineers could also export the final model into a CAD compliant format for additional postprocessing to provide the necessary drawings for fabrication purposes.

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