Long-Term Behavior of Novel Solid Wood-Concrete-Composite Floors with Combined Shear Connectors

Abstract

The possible significance of natural and sustainable building materials and their application both in the existing and new building stock is the question of overriding importance in modern building trade. With a special focus on wood-based structural components, it can generally be explored on two levels: 1) Adaptation of existing wood structures in consideration of a sustainable design concept, 2) Development of new wood-based building components and optimization of its manufacturing processes. To combine these two approaches and with the objective to improve the structural performance of wood-based composite floor systems, a new combination of solid woods and reinforced concrete, inspired by the traditional "Dippelbaumdecke" (dowel beam floor), is developed and investigated by means of its load-bearing and deflection behavior. As the overall project-related research activities thereby generally cover a wide range of investigations, this paper primarily focusses only on the related long-term static load-bearing and deflection behavior of the assessed novel structural system. The presented publication withal aggregates the results of the related experimental and analytical long-term investigations and gives an insight into the consequential time-dependent load-bearing behavior of the examined structural system under short-term loads, as well as into the arisen deflection resp. displacement behavior of the structural component and its related creep mechanisms under permanent long-term loads.