Since people's awareness about the importance of energy conservation and recycling of materials has increased in recent years, various projects to build a recycling society have been initiated. In the field of architecture also, we are faced with the need to recycle resources and reduce environmental impact, by taking actions to utilize renewable resources. Therefore, we have directed our attention to the recycling of aluminum and wooden materials as renewable resources from the viewpoint of solving global environment issues.
With this background, this paper proposes a composite structural column made of two different materials, aluminum and wood, in which wood is introduced into the aluminum box sectional member.
Since aluminum material requires a step of anodized aluminum welding, it has been thought that utilization as a structural member was unlikely to spread. However, since the approach proposed in this paper does not necessitate such welding, this opens the possibility of using joint hardware pieces such as screws and bolts in the same manner as used when jointing construction members in steel structure construction and the timber frame method.
Furthermore, with the use of a composite structural column as proposed by this paper, we conclude that the different materials of the composite structural column can make up for the drawbacks of each material, for example, controlling variations in bearing force in the timber and preventing local buckling in the aluminum.
Through this study, we plan to verify, with loading tests, whether such a composite structural column which is made of an aluminum box section with a wood member inside, is actually applicable to utilization in the field, and from the test results obtained, to introduce a formula for evaluating bearing force to identify the characteristics and values in use for the composite structural column.
We compared the characteristics of bending, shearing and compression of three specimens of an aluminum box section, a simple wood column and an aluminum-wood composite structural column, using pure bending tests, shearing tests, short column compression tests, and bending-buckling tests. By doing various experiments, we aimed to determine the structural characteristics of the composite structural column through comparison with the characteristics of a simple wood column to identify prospective application fields.
From the results of the experiments, we determined the structural characteristics of a composite structural column which is composed of an aluminum box section with wood inside, and proposed a related bearing force evaluation formula. In comparing the composite structural column specimen with a simple wood specimen and a specimen of aluminum box section, we confirmed that the composite structural column has improved mechanical characteristics such as bearing force and deformation performance. This composite structural column was verified to have a sufficient performance for practical application in the field.
