Strength parameters for fasteners determined in accordance with the methods prescribed for the European CE-marking leads to quite different values for seemingly similar products from different manufactures. The results are hardly repeatable, to some extent due to difficulties in selecting representative on engineered wood products...
Initially, timber was considered only as an easily accessible and processable material in nature; however, its excellent properties have since become better understood. During the discovery of new building materials and thanks to new technological development processes, industrial processing technologies and gradually drastically decreasing forest areas, wood has become an increasingly neglected material. Load-bearing structures are made mostly of reinforced concrete or steel elements. However, ecological changes, the obvious problems associated with environmental pollution and climate change, are drawing increasing attention to the importance of environmental awareness. These factors are attracting increased attention to wood as a building material. The increased demand for timber as a building material offers the possibility of improving its mechanical and physical properties, and so new wood-based composite materials or new joints of timber structures are being developed to ensure a better load capacity and stiffness of the structure. Therefore, this article deals with the improvement of the frame connection of the timber frame column and a diaphragm beam using mechanical fasteners. In common practice, bolts or a combination of bolts and pins are used for this type of connection. The subject of the research and its motivation was to replace these commonly used fasteners with more modern ones to shorten and simplify the assembly time and to improve the load capacity and rigidity of this type of frame connection.
Recent years have seen more architects and clients asking for tall timber buildings. In response, an ambitious timber community has been proposing challenging plans and ideas for multi-storey commercial and residential timber buildings. While engineers have been intensively looking at gravity-load-carrying elements as well as walls, frames and cores to resist lateral loads, floor diaphragms have been largely neglected.
Complex floor geometries and long span floor diaphragms create stress concentrations, high force demand and potentially large deformations. There is a lack of guidance and regulation regarding the analysis and design of timber diaphragms so structural engineers need a practical alternative to simplistic equivalent deep beam analysis or costly finite element modelling.
This paper proposes an equivalent truss method capable of solving complex geometries for both light timber framing and massive timber diaphragms. Floor panels are discretized by equivalent diagonals, having the same stiffness as the panel including its fasteners. With this method the panel unit shear forces (shear flow) and therefore fastener demand, chord forces and reaction forces can be evaluated. Because panel stiffness is accounted for, diaphragm deflection, torsional effects and transfer forces can also be assessed.
The introduction of Cross-laminated Timber (CLT) as an engineered timber product has played a significant role in the considerable progress of timber construction in recent years. Extensive research has been conducted in Europe and more recently in Canada to evaluate the fastening capacity of different types of fasteners in...
The focus of this research is the connection between steel frame and the infill wall. Over 100 conventional bracket-type connections with various combinations of bracket and fasteners with cross-laminated timber were tested, investigated and assessed for damage under seismic loading protocols for a hybrid application. An energy-based formulation according to Krätzig was applied to calculate the development of the damage index, and the resulting index was validated with visual observation. Six of the connections were modeled in OpenSees. For the modeling, a CUREE-10 parameter model was chosen to reproduce the test curves. The load-displacement results from both test and model were analyzed; the first method according to ASTM standards, where the envelope curve of the hysteretic results are considered and plotted in an equivalent energy elastic-plastic curve (EEEP). The second analyzing method used, was Krätzig’s damage accumulation model. Throughout all six combinations and both loading directions (parallel- and perpendicular-to-the-grain) a major difference was found in the analyzing methods. The EEEP curve roughly approximates the performance but with the damage accumulation method showed that analysis of the subsequent cycles is required to better reflect the empirical performance of the connections. To avoid the extensive destruction of a bracket type connection after completion of seismic loadings, a new approach was chosen. It was found that a tube connection can obtain comparably similar strength results as a conventional bracket connection. The computed mechanical properties of bracket-type and tube-type connections were compared and evaluated. The new tube connection showed great potential for future timber-steel hybrid structures and their connecting challenge. A total of 27 connection assemblies were tested under quasi-static monotonic and reversed cyclic loads. The tube connections showed two major differences when compared to traditional bracket connections: i) the completely linear elastic behaviour at the beginning, and ii) the continued load increase after yielding. Both phenomena are founded in the geometry of that connector effectively making the novel connector a very promising alternative.
Cross-laminated timber (CLT) products are gaining popularity in the North American market and are being used in midrise wood buildings, in particular, in shearwall applications. Shearwalls provide resistance to lateral loads such as wind and earthquake loads, and therefore it is important to gain a better understanding of the behavior of CLT shearwall systems during earthquake events. This paper is focused on the seismic performance of connections between CLT shearwall panels and the foundation. CLT panels are very stiff and energy dissipation is accomplished by the connections. A literature review on previous research work related to damage prediction and assessment for wood frame structures was performed. Furthermore, a test program was conducted to investigate the performance of CLT connections subjected to simulated earthquake loads. Two different brackets in combination with five types of fasteners were tested under monotonic and cyclic loading protocols. In total, 98 connection tests were conducted and the monotonic load-displacement curves and hysteretic loops were obtained. In this paper, an energy-based cumulative damage assessment model was calibrated with the CLT connection test data. Finally, a correlation between the damage index and physical damage is provided.
The Canadian standard for engineering design in wood (CSA O86) adopted the European yield model for calculations of the lateral resistance of connections with dowel-type fasteners. This model takes into account the yielding resistance of the fastener, the assembly's geometry and the embedment strength of wood. The latter is considered a function of the relative density of wood and diameter of the fastener. The purpose of this study is to verify the significance of these variables as applied to the embedment strength for threaded dowel-type fasteners of diameters 6.4 mm and greater in Canadian glulam products. The importance of this research is justified by the growing interest in the use of large-diameter threaded fasteners in heavy timber and hybrid structures of high load-bearing capacity. Based on the results of 960 tests, a new design model for the embedment strength is proposed for potential implementation in CSA O86 standard and the impact of such a change is presented.
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