Enhanced Structural Stability Delivers New Opportunities for Education Projects

SIPs have already brought significant advantages to many Education projects in terms of reduced build times and greater certainty over costs and building performance. These advantages are generally well understood and accepted.

Projects are also simplified by the load-bearing capabilities of the panels. Their inherent strength and stability means that they can be used to create the complete structure of the building or be used as rapidly installed infill panels for steel and concrete frames.

Large format panels with excellent load-bearing performance in relation to weight bring new freedoms to designers and architects, and major time savings to customers and contractors.

And now, there’s a new generation of SIP – Innovaré’s award-winning i-FAST System. i-FAST panels are formed from a stone wool insulation between two fibre cement boards, supported by internal timber studs in a staggered configuration.

The panel construction produces exceptional resistance to vertical, horizontal and racking forces. There is also comprehensive fire test compliance data for both and i-FAST panels validating their suitability for education and residential developments.

Load Resistance

The panels support vertical loads in the same way as a standard timber frame SIP, with studs acting as slender columns. Studs are restrained on one face by a diaphragm board and intermediate noggins at the board edges. Loads are shared between the inner and outer studs.

Horizontal wind loads are borne by the outer board and studs and transmitted to the head and base rails. The outer studs are restrained by the outer board and are structurally isolated from the inner studs by the staggered configuration.

Lateral Restraint

Racking forces are transmitted from walls into the floor diaphragm and directly into abutting racking walls. Panels transmit horizontal forces into the foundations to resist overturning and sliding. i-FAST panels can be designed to exceed the minimum racking performance of timber-framed walls due to the two layers of sheathing on independent layers of studs.

The i-FAST system combines unique fire and acoustic, thermal and structural performance in large format panels. This combination makes them the ideal choice for almost any Education project.

Find out more about the i-FAST system here.