Funding agency: Chilean National Agency of Research and Development (ANID)

Grant: FONDECYT Regular 1211767 (2021-2025)

Principal Investigator: Erick Saavedra-Flores

Co-Principal Investigators: Rodrigo Astroza and Gerardo Araya-Letelier

This research project will investigate the seismic collapse risk of CLT and hybrid timber buildings, whose complete understanding appear to be, until now, at a rather preliminary stage of development. The overall aim is to deliver a step-change in the field of collapse assessment of mass timber buildings and hybrid timber structures through advanced computational multi-scale simulations and laboratory investigations. A better understanding of the seismic collapse risk of mass timber buildings in seismic countries like Chile will lead to substantial improvements in design standards and detailing manuals for timber construction and eventually, will promote the efficient use of wood, and particularly CLT, in the building industry. This is important for the social housing sector, in which any marginal improvement in the material efficiency may enable savings to be re-invested into additional supply, resulting in further benefits for residents.