Refurbishment of existing timber floors with screwed CLT panels

A well-known, light, and almost reversiblere furbishment solution for existing timber floors is the use of a top timber flange connected to the joists to build up a “new” composite. This article proposes an improvement of that technique by using a cross-laminated timber (CLT) flange connected to the joists with inclined self-tapping screws. The use of an additional gap between the CLT and the existing joists contributes to increase the bending stiffness too. The inner gap is fixed by timber blocks resistant in compression but non-efficient in bending. These blocks act with the inclined screws to behave as a Pratt truss. An analytical model of the refurbishment is presented and a design example is discussed. Different configurations are finally introduced and compared to highlight pros and cons of the technique.