A Contemporary House Proposal: Structural Analysis of Wood and Steel Bungalows

Abstract

The housing typologies that meet shelter and other basic needs are diverse, and bungalows are one of them. These buildings are generally single-story and mostly use wooden building materials. This paper introduces a new construction technique using steel, which is more durable than typical wooden bungalow houses. This design aimed to create a new building stock based on the logic of mass production, where modular steel bars can be prefabricated and transported to the construction site. An architectural design with a steel construction instead of a wooden one and a hexagonal plan instead of a rectangular one was developed. Structures designed with wooden and steel materials were compared using the structural analysis method. Structural analysis of the construction designs using wood and S235 steel grade was performed with the SAP2000 software. The structures were evaluated according to displacement, modal analysis periods, and self-weight, and their static suitability was tested. This new architectural design was developed because steel can maintain its strength for a long time compared to wood and has a higher modulus of elasticity. The results showed that wood and steel materials exhibit similar behavior under the same cross-sections, but the steel structure has come to the forefront as it is lighter than wood in terms of self-weight.