Integrated design of connection systems for modular prefab timber buildings

Modular prefabricated timber buildings provide an opportunity to implement circular economy principles in the Australian building sector by creating buildings that serve the occupant’s needs over an entire lifetime. The adaptable design ensures that these buildings can grow as families grow and can be downsized when children move out. Demountable building systems can be relocated as a whole or in parts and can repeatedly be re-used thereby reducing construction and demolition waste (CDW) and retaining value-add through closed-loop re-use. The logical progression is to realise modular off-site construction by using a renewable resource such as timber, which stores carbon while in use and extending the service life of those timber elements through adaptable modular design.

This project aims to develop adaptable modular timber buildings that can be manufactured off-site and re-used multiple times within a circular economy framework. This research will particularly focus on solving the technical issues in the aspect of Design-for-Disassembly (DfD) and structural engineering - the integrated design of reversible connections and structural health assessment/monitoring and re-certification before re-using of building components.