A Review of Structural Robustness with Focus on Timber Buildings

With an increasing number of storeys, timber buildings require closer attention to structural robustness. If a building can survive unforeseen events (e.g. accidents, terrorism), lives can be saved. The literature appears to be rather limited concerning robustness of timber buildings. This paper aims to give a brief review on robustness in general and design guidelines for timber in specific. The results indicate that connection design is a key aspect for robustness. Like in seismic design, by using the ductile capacity of connectors, the brittleness of timber can be controlled. For light timber-frame buildings, more guidelines exist than for posts and beams and cross-laminated timber, which both seem to be similar to steel frames and precast concrete respectively regarding robustness.