ABSTRACT
The performance of timber plate structures realized by physical experiments indicates that the overall structural behavior is controlled by the wood-wood connections and the architectural pattern. Within this context, it was realized that the design pattern used as the arrangement of Integrally-Attached Timber Plate (IATP) structures magnifies the weakness of wood-wood connections, and it leads to systematic structural failure. This was detected in Chapter 3, where a continuous failure path was observed during the experimental test of the medium-scale prototype. The adopted tiling method and associated assembly logic dictated that some wood-wood connections carry loads much more than other connections. Accordingly, the failure in these connections leads to the failure of the entire system, while other connections do not significantly contribute to the load-carrying mechanism. It is within this context that there is a need to optimize the design pattern with respect to structural performance and force flow mechanism. This chapter aims to demonstrate that form and force can be optimally combined, and many benefits can come out from the optimization process. Therefore, instead of fabricating wood-wood connections with bigger dimensions than what was offered in Chapter 2 and Chapter 3, or instead of using additional connectors such as screws or nails, the structural performance can be considerably improved by changing the assembly pattern.
