The master’s thesis explores the importance of our bodies as musicians in establishing the positive impacts of mindfulness on performance, particularly in terms of improving body mapping. Musicians are aware that holding extreme tension in their bodies can affect the quality of the music. Therefore, understanding the complex workings of our bones, muscles, and connective tissues while performing can provide deep explanations on how to reduce pain and tension that can be caused by poor posture, a lack of balance, restricted movement, and other related factors. The approaches taken in this thesis involve developing an awareness of the important joints and bones for violinists and understanding their functions during performances, as well as whether they are well mapped or mis-mapped. For the sounding part, my exam concert included Beethoven's "Kreutzer" violin sonata No. 9, Op. 47, in A minor, and Shostakovich's Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor. The reason for choosing these two pieces to be performed in one concert is because they demand a high level of stamina and muscle strength from the performers. / <p>Beethoven's "Kreutzer" violin sonata No. 9, Op. 47, in A minor.</p><p>Shostakovich's Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor.</p>

In the modern building industry wood as a building material has been looked on as one of the solutions to lower the environmentally impact of the building industry. Building types that normally have been reserved for concrete and steel are today being built with wood as main load bearing component. However, the structural robustness of high-rise wood building has been questioned. The concern relates to wood’s brittle failure-mode and therefore the capacity of wood buildings to withstand catastrophic events where a loadbearing structural part its removed from the construction. To counteract a brittle failure mode in wood and create a ductile failure mode that allows alternative load paths, ductile steel connectors are seen as a solution. With inspiration from the concrete and steel industry, catenary action is brought forward as the most efficient method to create an alternative load path in high-rise wood buildings. To create catenary action, a tube connector that allows excessive deformation with increasing strength was believed to have sufficient capacity. A test method for testing tube connector capacity in a catenary event was developed with a main focus on tube capacity and forces created on the surrounding structure in a catastrophic event. To achieve this, a long stroke reversed 4-point bending test was formed and testing of traditional fasteners and the tube connector was conducted. Test result from catenary capacity testing showed low to no capacity for traditional fastening methods, however, traditional fastening method created arcing action in the beginning of the test cycles. The traditional fasteners showed a consistency in failure mode with arching and wood crushing before connection failure in form of screw withdrawal. Tube connectors had low to no consistency in failure modes, but higher consistency in capacity. Failure mode regarding tubes consisted of steel failure in tube and wood failure in the test specimen. In general, the tubes connector showed promising capacity and ductility to create alternative load paths with the help of catenary action. The project has shown that some design development for the tube connector and lager scale testing are needed to completely understand tube connector capacity and failure mode.

The increased popularity of timber buildings has heightened the demand for more knowledge on how tomake these buildings safer. In many cases, parts of wooden constructions are prebuilt in factories that later are delivered to the building site. Transportation by road limits the sizes of the parts. When the structural timber parts arrive on site, they are ultimately assembled into the building. Some of these smaller parts, specifically cross-laminated timber (CLT) floor boards, create joints when connected together. The EI criteria of these joints will be examined in this bachelor thesis.  The purpose is to show the requirements to satisfy the EI criteria for CLT joints and evaluate different types of joints with the help of screening tests using the fire furnace at Luleå tekniska universitet (LTU). While doing so also collect more information and become more familiar with the material and engineering methods used.  Previous evaluations of joints have shown that it is essential that they are fully airtight for them to meet the EI criterion. However, this was with different types of structural timber, combined with different core joints and thicknesses of floor boards. Results have shown various viable CLT joints, airtight and semi-airtight, that met the EI-90 criteria and other non-viable joints that explored non-airtight solutions with a twist. The method, results and other observations during testing were analysed and discussed to assess their feasibility and the impact some error sources may have had. The conclusion is that all joints met the EI-criteria. While straight joints have a lot of smoke emissions, the temperature at the top of the joint do not exceed critical temperatures for the gap sizes in this thesis.

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