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Lecture

Timber Folded Plate Structures: Snap-Fit Joints

Description

This lecture explores the design and assembly methodology of timber folded plate structures, focusing on the automatic production of wood-wood connections using dovetail and Nigeria arrogate variants. The use of prefabricated timber plates, snap-fit joints, and dovetail joints in creating geometrically stable structures is discussed, along with the structural performance demonstrated through numerical simulations. The lecture also presents prototypes of double-layer folded plate structures with snap-fit joints, emphasizing the advantages of increased inertia, insulation capabilities, and resistance to shear forces. The application of snap-fit joints in constructing pews for the Lausanne Cathedral in Switzerland is showcased, highlighting the ease of assembly, disassembly, and maintenance of the geometrically stable and economically designed structures.

In MOOC

Advanced Timber Plate Structural Design

Official source

Related concepts (12)

Structural engineering

Structural engineering is a sub-discipline of civil engineering in which structural engineers are trained to design the 'bones and muscles' that create the form and shape of human-made structures. Structural engineers also must understand and calculate the stability, strength, rigidity and earthquake-susceptibility of built structures for buildings and nonbuilding structures. The structural designs are integrated with those of other designers such as architects and building services engineer and often supervise the construction of projects by contractors on site.

Structural engineer

Structural engineers analyze, design, plan, and research structural components and structural systems to achieve design goals and ensure the safety and comfort of users or occupants. Their work takes account mainly of safety, technical, economic, and environmental concerns, but they may also consider aesthetic and social factors. Structural engineering is usually considered a specialty discipline within civil engineering, but it can also be studied in its own right.

Structural integrity and failure

Structural integrity and failure is an aspect of engineering that deals with the ability of a structure to support a designed structural load (weight, force, etc.) without breaking and includes the study of past structural failures in order to prevent failures in future designs. Structural integrity is the ability of an item—either a structural component or a structure consisting of many components—to hold together under a load, including its own weight, without breaking or deforming excessively.

Structural mechanics

Structural mechanics or mechanics of structures is the computation of deformations, deflections, and internal forces or stresses (stress equivalents) within structures, either for design or for performance evaluation of existing structures. It is one subset of structural analysis. Structural mechanics analysis needs input data such as structural loads, the structure's geometric representation and support conditions, and the materials' properties. Output quantities may include support reactions, stresses and displacements.

Timber framing

Timber framing (Holzfachwerk) and "post-and-beam" construction are traditional methods of building with heavy timbers, creating structures using squared-off and carefully fitted and joined timbers with joints secured by large wooden pegs. If the structural frame of load-bearing timber is left exposed on the exterior of the building it may be referred to as half-timbered, and in many cases the infill between timbers will be used for decorative effect.

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