creator Ling, Lei advisor Mohammadi, Jamshid With the global growth in using timber as a structural material for tall buildings to respond to the trend of sustainability, several timber buildings from 7 stories to 10 stories have already been built in Europe and Australia. However, in the United States, timber buildings are still limited to 6 or less stories [2]. The motivation of this thesis is to respond to the proposal for fire safety challenges of tall wood buildings issued by the Fire Protection Research Foundation. Since using timber as a structural material is just underway, more related studies from different academic departments and organizations are required in order to characterize the fire performance of tall timber structures, investigate the related challenges and necessary research to achieve a high level of safety and property protection equal to those offered by concrete or steel structures, and promote the development of this type of building systems. This thesis presents a literature review of global design cases of timber buildings, corresponding calculations of fire-resistance rating, recent and ongoing fire tests, and adhesive effects of timber members. A gap analysis was developed, with current challenges of building timber buildings presented, focusing on structural design, fire protection, durability, and code regulations requirements. This gap analysis was then compared with other similar published papers in an attempt to have a better understanding of what areas of research are needed, and suggesting for further studies to promote the idea of using timber as a structural material for tall buildings. Submitted by Liana Khananashvili (khananashvili@iit.edu) on 2014-10-23T18:53:43Z No. of bitstreams: 2 Lei_Ling_Thesis.pdf: 868375 bytes, checksum: 9b625a394ef71db9bab0509e74b7d9e3 (MD5) Lei_Ling_Thesis_Signed.pdf: 889759 bytes, checksum: d533b9ba76742e26365345f3a6ef0c3b (MD5) Made available in DSpace on 2014-10-23T18:53:43Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 Lei_Ling_Thesis.pdf: 868375 bytes, checksum: 9b625a394ef71db9bab0509e74b7d9e3 (MD5) Lei_Ling_Thesis_Signed.pdf: 889759 bytes, checksum: d533b9ba76742e26365345f3a6ef0c3b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-05 M.S. in Civil Engineering, May 2014 2014 2014-05 http://hdl.handle.net/10560/3302 en Thesis born digital application/pdf In Copyright http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/ Restricted Access CAEE / Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering Illinois Institute of Technology Affiliated department