The US Army is now “quake testing” shelters made from advanced cross-laminated timber with engineers developing new types of mass timber products using Western Hemlock, a highly economical and accessible timber species that grows prolifically across the Pacific Northwest.
The research, a collaboration between the US Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (CERL), the Composite Recycling Technology Center (CRTC), and Washington State University (WSU), comes amid growing momentum across the Army for mass timber to be used for more resilient structures in everyday use and contested logistics scenarios.
Speaking to ABC News after the latest recent round of seismic tests, Dr Peter Stynoski, a research civil engineer at the ERDC, said, “The latest test did a great job of validating the new types of connectors that the team designed, making sure that occupants inside would be safe during something significant, as we saw, which is equivalent to a 250–500-year event.”
For more than twenty years, Dr Stynski and the ERDC have been researching the use of cross-laminated timber in US Military Construction Projects (or MILCON) – with the Department of the Defence last year approving plans to to increase the use of mass timber in low-rise residential projects (up to three levels).
Rapid deployment: Timber-based installations are ‘battle ready’
Now, the ERDC, with the help of force protection and building technology expertise, is testing the new material for fragment impact and seismic simulations at its state-of-the-art testing facilities in Washington State.
“One of the ultimate goals (of the research) is to produce smaller-scale contingency-style structures that can be disassembled, put into a container and moved to another place,” Dr Stynoski said. “Maybe there is a pre-positioned stock of these materials where we might need them,” he said, adding, “Because of that thermal modification, it is resilient against biological threats. It is extremely dimensionally stable and has no moisture expansion or contraction issues.”
For Dr Stynoski, choosing mass timber construction over conventional materials like steel and concrete is not just an environmental choice but also helps increase logistical flexibility where forests are abundant.
“There are certain parts of the world where this is another arrow in the quiver … where mass timber will be fastest to construct,” Dr Stynoski stated, adding that thermally modified structural timber “offers great potential to the military” because “its dimensional stability during long-term storage is superior to traditional lumber, which expands and contracts over time.”
- To learn more about how advanced cross-laminated timber – is and how it could be a potential game-changer for the next generation of US Army military installations, click here for Wood Central’s special feature.
