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 timber samples for the testing. Beside this uncertainty, the declared values available to the designer concerns only structural timber, so no strength parameters are available for common engineered wood products such as LVL or plywood
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 CLT. While ductile capacities calculated using the yield limit equations are quite reliable for fastener resistance in connections, however, they do not take into account the possible brittle failure modes of the connection which could be the governing failure mode in multi-fastener joints. Therefore, a stiffness-based design approach which has already been developed by the authors and verified in LVL, glulam and lumber has been adapted to determine the block-tear out resistance of connections in CLT by considering the effect of perpendicular layers. The comparison between the test results on riveted connections conducted at the University of Auckland (UoA) and at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the predictions using the new model and the one developed for uniformly layered timber products show that the proposed model provides higher predictive accuracy and can be used as a design provision to control the brittle failure of wood in CLT connections.
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.
One of the recent additions to the panoply of engineered wood products is cross-laminated timber (CLT). CLT is a prefabricated, large-scale, solid wood panel that consists of multiple layers of lumbers stacked together, with each layer arranged perpendicular to the next layer, glued with structural grade adhesives, and pressed. The use of massive CLT panels in wood construction provides several advantages over the traditional wood frame systems, making it particularly attractive for tall wood building construction. These main advantages are satisfactory distribution of defects, adequate seismic performance, ability to carry large loads, improved strength and stiffness, adequate acceptable fire performance, acceptable acoustic performance, and improved pre-fabrication.It is expected that as the CLT market will continue to mature, more diversified grades and special CLT products will be introduced into the markets. One special CLT product developed in at Oregon State University has been designated as hybrid CLT. Hybrid CLT refers to CLT panels manufactured with layers of high- and low-grade and low-density species, which aims at improving the economic efficiency and sustainability of the CLT industry with focus on the North America market.One of the potential issues with hybrid CLT panel application is related to the unknown performance of the connection systems which are highly dependent on the density of the wood in which the fasteners embed. Most of the existing models that have been developed for estimation of the fasteners capacities in withdrawal and lateral loading scenarios are developed based on the assumption of uniform density profile across the layers to which fasteners penetrate. In a hybrid CLT panel, there is a possibility of a variation in density profile along the panel thickness so that the fasteners can be driven into wood of different densities and driven in directions parallel and perpendicular to grain. Because of the potential variation in density profile in the hybrid CLT, the connection system performance cannot be predicted using design models used for uniform density profile applications similar to the models in National Design Specification (NDS) [1]. Therefore, there is a need for evaluation of connections performance in hybrid layup.The main objective of this work is to characterize the performance of connection systems for hybrid CLT. This is achieved through testing and modeling of single fastener connections and then testing and modeling of the typical connection systems. So, the specific objectives are: (1) evaluate the single fasteners performance to account for density variation and compare the results to a proposed modified model, (2) perform an experimental program to test different connection systems with different hybrid CLT panel layups, (3) develop a numerical algorithm based on the use of meta-heuristics tools to fit the optimal parameters for constitutive models to match the experimental data for the connection systems, (4) obtain the optimal parameters for constitutive models of the connection systems tested.
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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