The construction industry is a big contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, which has a negative environmental impact. Several studies have highlighted the possibility of using timber to reduce the environmental impact of construction. Most of these studies have focused on residential buildings, but little attention has been devoted to industrial buildings. In this paper, an attempt is made to compare the environmental impact of using timber, steel, and reinforced concrete in industrial buildings using life cycle assessment. The system boundary was set to cradle-to-gate with transportation to construction site due to the limitation of data, and only the quantities of the main structural system are considered. Portal frames with variable spans were designed using the three materials to meet similar load carrying capacity. Reinforced concrete was used in the foundation of all frames. The results of the comparative study show that timber has, by a good margin, better environmental impact than reinforced concrete and steel, due to the carbon stored in the wood. The results also show that reinforced concrete and steel alternatives have similar environmental impacts. The findings of this study agree with the findings of other studies on residential buildings.

The light weight and moderate stiffness of multistorey timber buildings make them susceptible to increased lateral displacements and accelerations under service-level wind loading. Therefore, the fulfilment of serviceability requirements is a major challenge. In this study, linear elastic finite element analysis was used to perform a parametric study of moment-resisting timber frames combined with cross laminated timber walls. In the parametric study, various mechanical and geometrical parameters were varied within practical ranges. The results of the parametric study were used to derive simplified analytical expressions and to train artificial neural networks which can be used to estimate fundamental frequency, mode shape, top floor displacement, maximum inter-storey drift, and wind-induced acceleration. The analytical expressions and the artificial neural networks can be used for the preliminary assessment of serviceability performance of moment-resisting timber frames with and without cross laminated timber walls, under service-level wind loading.

Tall timber buildings are prone to serviceability problems (e.g. lateral displacements and wind-induced accelerations). This article investigates the feasibility of timber outrigger system to build up to 20 storeys using linear elastic finite element analysis and relevant European and international standards such as EN 1990, EN 1991-1-1, EN 1991-1-4, EN 1995-1-1 and ISO 10137. The location of up to two outriggers was optimised based on different serviceability criteria. Various outrigger layouts were investigated, and their stiffness demands were discussed. The efficiency of outrigger structures in reducing lateral displacements and wind-induced accelerations is highlighted. A feasibility study considering serviceability requirements was performed using different basic wind velocities, number of storeys and gravity loads. Although the focus of the article is on serviceability requirements, some ultimate limit state considerations (forces and stresses) were briefly discussed. The results demonstrate the feasibility of building up to 16 storeys under medium to high wind velocities.