As a mature system, the wood structure industry is being developed in many countries, including the US, Canada, Japan and parts of Europe. The excellent advantages of wood structures will be an important factor in the development of wood structure construction in China.
Earthquake-resistance:
Earthquake resistance is very important for buildings in earthquake-prone areas. It was reported in Beichuan town, which was the worst damaged area in the Wenchuan Earthquake on May 12th 2008, almost all of the ferro-concrete structure buildings were destroyed. Only Tianlou, one of the town’s historic buildings with a pure wood structure survived. Similarly, in Wenxian town, which is about 200 kilometer away from epicenter, many residences with masonry-concrete structure were also largely destroyed, whereas, one of the common residence building with wood materials as the building frame remained in good condition. These examples clearly show that wood structures have excellent earthquake resistance that reduces damage and loss in deadly earthquakes.
Wood structure can heavily reduce the death toll in the earthquake, because of the unique characteristic of wood structures. First, wood materials are flexible.
Consequently, wood structures can easily disperse the impact force of earthquakes to a large extent. Second, the weight of wood structures is lighter than other structures. Thus, the lighter wood structure buildings are able to bear a bigger impact from earthquakes without compounding the problem of structural weakness resulting from the earthquake (the weight of a concrete and steel building helps to crush the structure when supports are weakened). What’s more, the destroyed wood structure buildings will likely not hurt people as seriously, because of lighter weight. Third, the height of wood structure buildings is relatively lower than concrete/steel structures. Those factors will further improve the chances of survival in the event of earthquake damage.
Excellent Performance of Wood Materials:
The performance of wood is often superior to other building materials. Modern use of wood materials is not the same as it was in our parent’s day. Wood materials are treated by modern technologies to solve defects, including fireproofing, damp-resistance, wood preservation, insect protection. In addition, the service life of wood structures is longer than for concrete buildings. There are many wood buildings that are hundreds of years old in China and Europe, which obviously show that wood structures can be very durable.
Comfort, Environment Protection and Energy Saving：
As one kind of natural biological material, wood is friendly to the environment. And wood structure residences are also comfortable and benefit the health of the people living in them.
Besides, wood structures are also energy saving. It is reported that, about 55% of the energy used in Chinese buildings is used for heating in winter and cooling in summer. Compared with concrete buildings, wood structures will save about 75% of this energy as wood is a better insulator than metal or concrete. As China is short of energy resources, and is now the second largest consumer of energy in the world, any reduction in energy use without compromising the comfort of people is obviously beneficial. To maintain the growth rate of the Chinese economy, it’s really quite important for China to develop wood structure buildings to make better use of energy resources and to promote the better utilization of all natural resources.
It is expected that wood construction in China will further increase by 30 billion m2 over the next 15 years; about 10% of the urban construction will be distributed in low or medium density areas. All the buildings in rural areas will be low density. This means that, it will be good opportunities for further developing wood structures in China.
