EnWoBio - Engineered Wood and Biobased Building Materials Laboratory

Main financed by the the Swedish Research Council Formas (no. 2014-172), co-financed by Träcentrum Norr (TCN), Träskyddsföreningen, Madeab, Ofk Innovation, and SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden; and supported by KTH Royal Institute of Technology. 

See EnWoBio Prospect ; and see EnWoBio Publications

The objective is to engineer innovative wood and biobased building materials derived from renewable forest or agricultural biomass. The main driving force for this is to support a sustainable development of the society.

A great challenge, however, lies in ensuring long-term consistent performance of biobased building materials under the influence of e.g. hydrothermal variations, UV light, and microbial agents. In many cases a significantly extended service life should be targeted to be competitive to other mineral based materials. In most building applications a biobased material must resist bio-degradation, mainly determined by their moisture resistance.

The materials in focus are biobased composites (biocomposites), naturally modified wood, biobased insulation and cross-laminated timber (CLT) systems. The main idea is to demonstrate new innovative combinations of the materials in various applications, for example in multi-storey timber buildings. The project is structured in two interacting research areas: I) biobased building material science, revolving around material analyses and modification; and II) engineering and demonstration of the material systems, including life cycle and sustainability assessment as measures of e.g. environmental and socio-economic consequences.

The infrastructure for the project consists of a research joint venture between Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Luleå Technical University (LTU), SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden and a number of industry parties, hosted by KTH.