Development of timber concrete composite flooring in Australia and New Zealand

In 2007 a major R&D project commenced in Australia, investigating the performance of timber concrete composite flooring systems for potential application in non residential buildings. In mid 2008 the scope of the project was extended with the formation of the Structural Timber Innovation Company, which is a research consortium of government, industry and the University’s of Canterbury, Auckland and UTS in Sydney. The two year project has been undertaken by the University of Technology, Sydney in collaboration with the University of Canterbury, (NZ) and had focused on developing and characterising the performance of various types of timber / concrete connections. This paper describes the work undertaken in this project, including optimisation of connection geometries and presents the results of testing of over 100 connection assemblies, as well as discussing constructability issues that need to be addressed for this type of technology to gain acceptance in Australia and New Zealand and discussing current research that will continue until 2012