More about the project
Timber is a sustainable structural material increasingly used in multi-story buildings and emerging as a solution for special structures such as wind turbine towers. Compared to reinforced concrete and steel, timber offers advantages including lower weight and reduced carbon emissions. Despite significant advances in timber engineering, challenges related to floor vibration serviceability, fatigue, and long-term performance of timber elements and connections remain major barriers to wider implementation. Current design codes rely on simplified vibration criteria that are not well calibrated against full-scale experimental data.
Recent progress in monitoring technologies, probabilistic modeling, and Bayesian model updating offers new opportunities to address these challenges. By integrating experimental data with probabilistic digital twins (PDTs), structural models can be continuously updated to improve predictions of long-term performance. However, such approaches are still underdeveloped for timber due to its orthotropic behavior, moisture sensitivity, and variability in material and connection performance. Advancing this field is therefore essential to fully exploit timber’s potential as a sustainable structural material.
The project, carried out at Linnaeus University, includes the recruitment of Dr. Andre R. Barbosa from Oregon State University, a leading international expert in structural dynamics and timber engineering. The research focuses on three main areas: advancing vibration serviceability models
for timber floors through Bayesian updating of experimental data; developing PDTs for multi-story buildings and wind turbine towers; and establishing reliability assessment methods for long-term conditions. In close collaboration with industrial partners (Modvion, Dewesoft, Södra, Simpson Strong-Tie, and Skanska) and within the research profile Competitive Timber Structures, the project delivers methodological advances, practical tools, and strengthened international collaboration, contributing to safer, more reliable, and climate-neutral construction.
