Innovative Tape For House Builds

German researchers have developed an innovative prefabricated house construction aid that substitutes a special adhesive tape for traditional nails.

Prefabricated houses are comprised of modular components that have, themselves, already been assembled. A host of wooden sections go into these modules and, since they're held together by nails, the wood has got to be pretty substantial, thereby limiting what's possible in design terms.

Those restrictions are now set to be lifted, thanks to researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Wood Research, Wilhelm-Klauditz-Institut, WKI in Braunschweig and their partners at the Technische Universität Braunschweig's Institute of Joining and Welding.

Tape For Prefab Houses

The researchers' tape for prefab houses has a metal strip running up its core and adhesive strips along its perimeter.

So long as it's not exposed to an electrical current, the adhesive tape gives construction workers all the time they need to manipulate the wooden sections into place. However, once the correct positioning has been achieved, an electrical current is introduced, the metal gets hot, the adhesive becomes runny and permanent bonds are secured. The entire process last only around 60 seconds from start to finish: a shade of the timeframe associated with conventional adhesives.

According to officials at the Fraunhofer Institute for Wood Research, the adhesive used was selected for this task as it's both metal and wood-compatible.

Prefab Adhesive Tape

Now, the prefab adhesive tape team are exploring the benefits of using different metal types and hoping to reduce the adhesive bond timeframe even further. Large-scale trials are scheduled to get underway before the end of 2013.

"We've developed an adhesive tape that sets in under a minute to reliably and durably bond together the individual components", explained WKI representative Doctor Andreas Zillessen. "The adhesive sets at the push of a button, so to speak. This means that when we apply the adhesive tape when assembling components, we can wait as long as we like without the adhesive drying out, as other kinds of adhesive would.

He added: "We've already been able to demonstrate that the technology works in principle."

Adhesive tape image © Fraunhofer WKI