Digital and physical systems design for optimised design-to-delivery of prefabricated timber housing

Project Under Development

The technology currently used in Australia for construction of houses, especially for affordable (volume-built) homes is quite rudimentary and involves site-heavy and labour-heavy methods. This project aims to investigate the viability of offsite manufactured systems to replace these methods.

Please see Project Video for further information:

Node Introduction Video:

Objectives/Deliverables

Identify challenges in introducing offsite manufactured systems to replace the current ‘stick-built’ methods (installation issues, manufacturing issues etc.)
Develop DfMA based methods to efficiently manufacture timber-based (engineered-wood and composites) structural systems in large volumes
Develop visual simulisation tools to carry out multi objective optimisation and estimate carbon footprint while identifying necessary improvements to move towards net-zero (and beyond) systems
Assess both upstream and down-stream value chains to enable overall feasibility of these designs.

Project Leader/s

Priyan Mendis

Node Leader - Manufacturing Innovation; Chief Investigator

University of Melbourne

Project Staff

PhD Candidate

PhD Scholarship Opportunity

Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Postdoctoral Research Fellow Opportunity

Project Investigators

Tharaka Gunawardena

Project Leader; Chief Investigator

University of Melbourne

Ding Wen ‘Nic’ Bao

Project Leader; Chief Investigator

RMIT University

Project