Lumber, also known as timber, is wood that has been processed into beams and planks, a stage in the process of wood production. Lumber is mainly used for structural purposes but has many other uses as well.
A truss is an assembly of members such as beams, connected by nodes, that creates a rigid structure.
A structural insulated panel, or structural insulating panel, (SIP), is a form of sandwich panel used in the construction industry.
Tilt-up,tilt-slab or tilt-wall is a type of building and a construction technique using concrete. Though it is a cost-effective technique with a shorter completion time, poor performance in earthquakes has mandated significant seismic retrofit requirements in older buildings.
A curtain wall is an outer covering of a building in which the outer walls are non-structural, utilized only to keep the weather out and the occupants in. Since the curtain wall is non-structural, it can be made of lightweight materials, such as glass, thereby potentially reducing construction costs. An additional advantage of glass is that natural light can penetrate deeper within the building. The curtain wall façade does not carry any structural load from the building other than its own dead load weight. The wall transfers lateral wind loads that are incident upon it to the main building structure through connections at floors or columns of the building. A curtain wall is designed to resist air and water infiltration, absorb sway induced by wind and seismic forces acting on the building, withstand wind loads, and support its own weight.
This page is a list of construction topics.
Fazlur Rahman Khan was a Bangladeshi-American structural engineer and architect, who initiated important structural systems for skyscrapers. Considered the "father of tubular designs" for high-rises, Khan was also a pioneer in computer-aided design (CAD). He was the designer of the Sears Tower, since renamed Willis Tower, the tallest building in the world from 1973 until 1998 and the 100-story John Hancock Center.
In structural engineering, a shear wall is a vertical element of a system that is designed to resist in-plane lateral forces, typically wind and seismic loads. In many jurisdictions, the International Building Code and International Residential Code govern the design of shear walls.
A rafter is one of a series of sloped structural members such as wooden beams that extend from the ridge or hip to the wall plate, downslope perimeter or eave, and that are designed to support the roof shingles, roof deck and its associated loads. A pair of rafters is called a couple. In home construction, rafters are normally made of wood. Exposed rafters are a feature of some traditional roof styles.
A tie, strap, tie rod, eyebar, guy-wire, suspension cables, or wire ropes, are examples of linear structural components designed to resist tension. It is the opposite of a strut or column, which is designed to resist compression. Ties may be made of any tension resisting material.
ISO 13567 is an international computer-aided design (CAD) layer standard.
Cross-laminated timber (CLT) is a wood panel product made from gluing together layers of solid-sawn lumber, i.e., lumber cut from a single log. Each layer of boards is usually oriented perpendicular to adjacent layers and glued on the wide faces of each board, usually in a symmetric way so that the outer layers have the same orientation. An odd number of layers is most common, but there are configurations with even numbers as well. Regular timber is an anisotropic material, meaning that the physical properties change depending on the direction at which the force is applied. By gluing layers of wood at right angles, the panel is able to achieve better structural rigidity in both directions. It is similar to plywood but with distinctively thicker laminations.
In structural engineering, the open web steel joist (OWSJ) is a lightweight steel truss consisting, in the standard form, of parallel chords and a triangulated web system, proportioned to span between bearing points.
Earthquake-resistant or aseismic structures are designed to protect buildings to some or greater extent from earthquakes. While no structure can be entirely immune to damage from earthquakes, the goal of earthquake-resistant construction is to erect structures that fare better during Seismic activity than their conventional counterparts. According to building codes, earthquake-resistant structures are intended to withstand the largest earthquake of a certain probability that is likely to occur at their location. This means the loss of life should be minimized by preventing collapse of the buildings for rare earthquakes while the loss of the functionality should be limited for more frequent ones.
Cold-formed steel (CFS) is the common term for steel products shaped by cold-working processes carried out near room temperature, such as rolling, pressing, stamping, bending, etc. Stock bars and sheets of cold-rolled steel (CRS) are commonly used in all areas of manufacturing. The terms are opposed to hot-formed steel and hot-rolled steel.
The Metal Building Manufacturers Association (MBMA) was founded in 1956 and promotes the design and construction of metal building systems in the low-rise, non-residential building marketplace. A non-profit trade organization, MBMA's headquarters is in Cleveland, Ohio. The organization consists of building system members, who are certified according to standards which have been set by the International Accreditation Service of the International Code Council, and associate members, who work in the metal building industry. MBMA has a General Manager, and it has a chairman and Board of Directors who are elected by members on an annual basis.
In structural engineering, a pre-engineered building (PEB) is designed by a PEB supplier or PEB manufacturer with a single design to be fabricated using various materials and methods to satisfy a wide range of structural and aesthetic design requirements. This is contrasted with a building built to a design that was created specifically for that building. Within some geographic industry sectors pre-engineered buildings are also called pre-engineered metal buildings (PEMB) or, as is becoming increasingly common due to the reduced amount of pre-engineering involved in custom computer-aided designs, simply engineered metal buildings (EMB).
Hybrid masonry is a new type of building system that uses engineered, reinforced masonry to brace frame structures. Typically, hybrid masonry is implemented with concrete masonry panels used to brace steel frame structures. The basic concept is to attach a reinforced concrete masonry panel to a structural steel frame such that some combination of gravity forces, story shears and overturning moments can be transferred to the masonry. The structural engineer can choose from three different types of hybrid masonry and two different reinforcement anchorage types. In conventional steel frame building systems, the vertical force resisting steel frame system is supported in the lateral direction by steel bracing or an equivalent system. When the architectural plans call for concrete masonry walls to be placed within the frame, extra labor is required to ensure the masonry fits around the steel frame. Usually, this placement does not take advantage of the structural properties of the masonry panels. In hybrid masonry, the masonry panels take the place of conventional steel bracing, utilizing the structural properties of reinforced concrete masonry walls.
Metal profile sheet systems are used to build efficient, reliable and cost-efficient envelopes of mostly commercial buildings. They have evolved from the single skin metal cladding often associated with agricultural buildings to multi-layer systems for industrial and leisure application.
The Patera Building prototype, a significant example of British high-tech architecture, was manufactured in Stoke-on-Trent in 1982 by Patera Products Ltd. In 1980, Michael Hopkins architects and Anthony Hunt Associates engineers were instructed by LIH (Properties) Ltd to design a relocatable building 216 square metres in size.
