AMBER Research

Characterizing and Quantifying Environmental and Economic benefits of Cross Laminated Timber Buildings across the U.S.

Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) is a mass timber material that has the potential to expand the wood building market in the U.S. However, new sustainable building technologies need extensive field and numerical validation to quantify the environmental and economic benefits of using CLT as a sustainable building material so it can be broadly adopted in the building community. These benefits will also be projected nationwide across the United States once state-of-the-art software is validated and will include showcasing and documenting synergies among multiple technologies in the building envelope and heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems.

The objective of this project is to quantify and showcase environmental and economic benefits of CLT as a sustainable building material in actual (and simulated) commercial buildings across the entire United States by doing: (1) on-site monitoring of at least four CLT buildings, (2) whole-building energy model validation, (3) optimization of the performance and design for CLT buildings, and (4) comparison with traditional building envelopes. This knowledge gap needs to be filled to position CLT on competitive grounds with steel and concrete.

Collaborators: University of Denver, Oak Ridge National Laboratory