The application of massive timber construction in the urban context of Vienna : focussing indoor thermal bahaviour in summer and comfort of the users

Abstract

March 2004 the "wohnfonds_wien" - fund for housing construction and urban renewal - offered a competiton called "Wien 21, Mühlweg, Holz und Holzmischbauweise". This was the first time in Vienna wood as a building material for multi-storey dwelling buildings was asked in a bigger context. Since this competition, where at least three projects were realized in 2006, the number of timber constructions raised steadily in Vienna. The fact that again a housing development competition was offered in 2009, again with the topic timber constructions for residential buildings, lead to this work. using massive wood as CLT panels for multi-storey building is has a lot of advantages. But there are also few open questions. One of these questions is definitely to handle the indoor climate conditions of such buildings. To consider this the thesis shall give a first overview of the thermal behaviour of massive wood constructions. The main focus is laid on examining the ability of heat storage of construction elements and the real consequences to the indoor thermal behaviour of rooms in summer conditions. For that several construction elements - more precisely - compartment walls and floors which fulfil the requirements due to heat protection, acoustics and fire protections for multi-storey dwelling buildings were chosen and analyzed. For that a simulation program has been used to simulate thermal conditions of single rooms mainly to examine the thermal behaviour in summer and the problem of "overheating". By the means of this program first conclusions to the internal behaviour of different building components due to summer conditions are stated.