The contemporary imperative of sustainable development has established an unprecedented degree of urgency, in view of the intransigent challenges posed by the persistent and ever-increasing energy and climate crises. In 2019, the Swedish building industry accounted for 21% of the nation’s total greenhouse gas emissions, with the structural framework of a building contributing to 34% of its overall emissions. In response to climate change and the housing demand caused by a growing population, sustainable construction solutions are needed. By substituting steel beams with timber beams, the carbon emissions caused by the building industry can be reduced significantly. This study investigates whether timber based, or steel-reinforced timber beams can provide comparable load-bearing capacity to steel beams while reducing carbon. How this impacts the cross-sectional height of the beams is also taken into consideration. Different load-bearing properties were calculated according to Eurocode using Excel for all the surveyed beams. The carbon emissions were calculated based on the weight of each beam combined with climate data obtained from the Swedish National Board of Housing, Building and Planning. Findings suggest that timber-based beams made from glulam or laminated veneer lumber exhibit moment capacity and bending stiffness on par with those of steel beams while reducing the carbon emissions drastically, but at the cost of increased cross-section height. Steel beams were identified as the main source of carbon emissions. Consequently, also making steelreinforced timber beams only marginally successful in reducing carbon emissions if at all.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:hh-50582 |
| Date | January 2023 |
| Creators | Ivansson, Viktor |
| Publisher | Högskolan i Halmstad, Akademin för företagande, innovation och hållbarhet |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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