Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Technology => Topic started by: thedoc on 21/10/2014 17:13:00
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Can we change wood at the molecular level to make it suitable for building "plyscrapers"?
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I don't know much about wood at the molecular level, nor about the biochemistry whereby it is generated. However, I strongly suspect that wood can be so used through innovative building design. One thing that comes to mind is hybrid construction. Instead of concrete and steel, use wood and steel. Wood weighs a lot lest per cubic foot than concrete, and is more resiliant, eliminating some of the need for steel reinforcement that would be required in concrete. So I envision a building whose main frame is steel, but on that is hung a largely wood structure. Another thing that could be done is replace conventional framing with a system of suspension using steel cables. With such techniques, the strength of steel could be used to maximum effectiveness with minimum quantity used, whereas using lightweight wood everywhere else would result in less overall load.
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One of the issues in skyscraper design is fire isolation. Efforts have to be made to keep a localized fire localized.
Wood burns. Now, one might be able to encase wood in concrete to give it some amount of protection, but anywhere wood is exposed, then the fundamental problem of flammability remains.