Development of a design procedure for timber concrete composite floors in Australia and New Zealand

Medium rise commercial and multi-residential buildings (up to eight stories) represent significant markets that thetimber industry can potentially penetrate. This is possible with the availability of advanced engineered wood product and‘new generation’ composite structures. From the mid 2000’s, the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), in partnershipwith universities and industry key-players in Australia and New Zealand – overseen by Structural Timber InnovationCompany (STIC) – has been active in investigating innovative structural systems that utilise timber and provide acompetitive alternative to steel and concrete solutions.Timber concrete composite (TCC) solutions have been gaining a lot of attention in Australia and New Zealand over thelast few years. To address this emergence, researchers at UTS have focused on identifying and optimising TCCconnections and outlining robust design procedure. This paper puts forward design guidelines that comply withAustralian codes1 and give consideration for ultimate limit state (ULS) and serviceability limit state (SLS) designrequirements. Fabrication provisions are also provided in order to secure a sound and successful implementation of TCCfloor solutions.