St. Josef Parish Church in Holzkirchen, Germany

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Shell Structure Made of Glued-Laminated Timber

The engineers from Sailer Stepan Partner were in charge of the structural planning and used RSTAB to design the 3D structures.

Church Structure 

The main church, with a height of 71 ft, has an elliptical footprint with a diameter of about 113 ft. A skylight consisting of a steel-glass construction forms the roof level.

The suspended visible shell structure is made of member-shaped glulam struts which each form triangles and thus have a supporting as well as a stiffening function. 

The nodal points of the triangles result from the intersection points of the fall lines of the cone with differently inclined section planes. This has resulted in about 320 nodal points, of which a maximum of two have the same, mirrored geometry. The elliptical rings located in the intersection planes are single, curved glulam beams provided with rigid site joints.

The diagonals which are mainly subjected to compression were modeled in RSTAB as compression members with failure under tension resistance. This allowed the optimization of the nodal points in such a way that the normal forces of the diagonal members are only introduced by means of pressure contact. The structural fixing of the diagonals is carried out by means of equally distributed steel tension members between the rings.

All connections were created as hidden. They consist of steel in the rule nodes and fittings made of beech laminated veneer lumber in less stressed nodes.