Demi Fang

Massachusetts Institute of Technology | MIT · Building Technology

Despite being accepted as a robust assessment of masonry stability, thrust line analysis (TLA) relies on assumptions that can lead to a conservative assessment of stability. This article aims to quantify the extent of these limitations through a comparison of TLA with discrete element modeling (DEM). Two studies are provided. The first study compar...

Historic timber structures feature timber joinery connections that use interlocking geometries rather than fasteners. While timber construction since has gradually favored metallic fasteners, the longevity of historic timber structures utilizing joinery connections demonstrates their feasibility in structural systems and potential to enable sustain...

Principles and precedents in efficient structural design demonstrate the advantage of designing topologies that align well with an underlying vector field, such as principal stress or principal bending moment. While there now exist methods and mature research fields for generating topologies from those underlying vector fields, an alternate approac...

The mass timber industry offers a compelling pathway for low-carbon structural systems in buildings, replacing carbon-intensive materials like concrete and steel with sustainably forested wood. However, conventional structural connections in mass timber construction are largely made of metallic materials, such as screws, nails, and plates. In contr...

Timber joinery is a method of geometrically interlocking timber elements prevalent in historic cultures around the world, including North America, Europe, and East Asia. The use of joinery as structural connections faded with the development of metallic screws and nails. Two recent developments offer the opportunity to revive this historic timber c...

This work fully investigates a specific timber joinery connection via experimental, analytical, and numerical methods. The selected joint is the Nuki joint: a mortised column with through-beam tenon. The experimental approach takes advantage of digital fabrication to reduce variations introduced by hand fabrication while the analytical approach bui...

Historic timber structures feature timber joinery connections that use interlocking geometries rather than fasteners. While timber construction since has gradually favored metallic fasteners, the longevity of historic timber structures utilizing joinery connections demonstrates their feasibility in structural systems and potential to enable sustain...

Innovations in mass timber have ushered in a resurgence of timber construction. Historic timber structures feature joinery connections which geometrically interlock, rarely featuring in modern construction which utilizes steel fasteners for connection details. Research in the geometric potential and mechanical performance of joinery connections rem...

This paper describes how NovoEd, a web platform that hosts a variety of online courses, was used to enhance an introductory course (taught at Princeton University (USA) during the fall of 2014) with a structural engineering design component. Though the project was implemented in a solid mechanics course, the project’s aims and objectives are applic...