Towards timber mid-rise buildings in Chile: structural design challenge and regulation gaps

Abstract

At present in Chile it is not possible to construct buildings higher than 3 storeys using timber as structural material. This difficulty is due to high demands of regulations, in addition to cultural reasons, even though there are buildings in timber with more than 5 storeys built in 1910 in Chile (Sewell), which are preserved nowadays. A multidisciplinary team at UC Timber Innovation Center (CIM UC) works on the design of a mid-rise building in timber with a platform frame system for a mining company with few budget restrictions for this specific project. The results will be presented in this paper. Been the economic feasibility the main concern of the UC Timber Innovation Center (CIM UC), in order to spread this technology to a standard client, a larger team is working in parallel towards a proposal of modification of structural design regulations for the construction of mid-rise buildings in Chile with timber platform frame system. The work included an extensive bibliographic revision, followed by structural tests on 2D and 3D timber structures.