Engineered wood products are made to enhance natural strengths and remove natural weaknesses. These type of wood products provide longer, wider, and stronger, stable solutions to the builders compared to natural timber.
Engineered wood products provide sustainable low-carbon-footprint structural solutions with a special natural beauty, low weight, and elegance. In this blog article, we will briefly discuss some of the common engineered wood products used in mass timber construction. These include but are not limited to the following:
- Nail-Laminated Timber (NLT)
- Glue-Laminated Timber (Glulam)
- Structural Composite Lumber (SCL)
- Dowel-Laminated Timber (DLT)
- Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT)
Nail-Laminated Timber
This wood product is created with dimensional lumber stacked on edge and then fastened with nails or screws to create larger and more stable elements.
Glulam
Glulam has powerful strength, stability, and stiffness. This type of wood product is made from parallel solid timber parts fixed together with adhesives under high pressure. The grains of the dimensional lumber all run in the same direction.
Structural Composite Lumber (SCL)
The Structural Composite Lumber typically used in mass timber construction are Laminated Veneer Lumber (LVL) and Laminated Strand Lumber (LSL). These are wood products made with graded veneers, strands, or flakes of wood that are dried and layered with adhesives. SCL can be manufactured in very large panels or thicknesses that can be pre-cut before construction.
Dowel-Laminated Timber
With DLT, softwood dimensional lumber boards are stacked and friction fit with the use of dowels. DLT is currently more common in Europe than in North America, but is gaining ground here because of special acoustic benefits.
CLT
CLT is manufactured with dimensional lumber at right angles and glued together. This creates an exceptionally rigid and strong product.
Mass timber engineered wood products are revolutionizing building construction by using wood in novel ways and in an environmentally friendly fashion.
Seagate Mass Timber is leading the revolution in “Big Wood” being used in all areas of construction. Seagate has offices in British Columbia, Canada and the US in Washington state.
If you have any questions about this article or would like to talk to us about your construction project, please call us at (604) 529-7685.
