Hardwood constructions

Hardwoods - especially beech and ash - naturally have higher specific strengths than softwoods. This makes it possible to design slimmer, more load-bearing load-bearing structures. neue Holzbau AG has been producing glulam in hardwood for over 10 years. The company has had consistently positive experiences with ash in particular, but also with beech, oak and robinia. Hardwood is considerably more expensive to process than spruce. The procurement of hardwood boards is also more expensive, as they are not (yet) a mass product. The additional work causes significant additional costs compared to glulam in spruce. In order to use glulam efficiently, the advantages of hardwood over softwood must be exploited. In addition to the significantly higher strengths (especially in the areas of bending, shear, tensile strength transverse and parallel to the grain, compressive strength transverse and rolling shear strength), these are the massively higher performances in the area of fasteners. A GS anchor (fastener with glued-in threaded rod) in ash is 1.5 times more efficient than in spruce, without sacrificing performance in terms of stiffness and ductility. Significantly higher performance with hardwood is also achieved with rod dowel or screw connections.