Recent interests in adopting sustainable materials and developments in construction technology have created a trend of aiming for greater heights with timber buildings. With the increased height these buildings are subjected to higher level of lateral load demand. A common and efficient way to increase capacity is to use shearwalls, which can resist significant part of the load on the structures. Prefabricated mass timber panels such as those made of Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) can be used to form the shearwalls. But due to relatively low stiffness value of timber it is often difficult to keep the maximum drifts within acceptable limit prescribed by building codes. It becomes necessary to either increase wall sizes to beyond available panel dimensions or use multiple or groups of walls spread over different locations over the floor plan. Both of the options are problematic from the economic and functional point of view. One possible alternative is to adopt a Hybrid system, using Steel Plate Shear Walls (SPSW) with timber moment frames. The SPSW has much higher stiffness and combined with timber frames it can reduce overall building drifts significantly. Frames with prefabricated timber members have considerable lateral load capacity. For structures located in seismic regions the system possesses excellent energy dissipation ability with combination of ductile SPSW and yielding elements within the frames. This paper investigates combination of SPSW with timber frames for seismic applications. Numerical model of the system has been developed to examine the interaction between the frames and shear walls under extreme lateral load conditions. Arrangements of different geometries of frames and shear walls are evaluated to determine their compatibility and efficiency in sharing lateral loads. Recommendations are presented for optimum solutions as well as practical limits of applications.
The purpose of this study is to develop a high strength leg joint for shear wall made of small size cross laminated timber panel in a simple system. The joint of CLT in which steel plate was inserted in the central slit and fixed by high strength bolt at inside of short steel pipes was proposed. In order to grasp the failure mode and strength of CLT member, material tests on embedment and shear were carried out using small CLT blocks. The test results indicated that there is few reinforce effect by cross bonding of each lamina. It was concluded that the precise estimation of the strength of CLT member is important in order to develop the joint proposed in this paper.
This paper presents the results of long-term experiments performed on three timber-concrete composite (TCC) beams. An innovative fabricated steel plate connection system, which consists of screws and steel plates embedded in concrete slabs, was adopted in the TCC beam specimens. The adopted shear connection can provide dry-type connection for TCC beams. Steel plates were embedded in concrete slabs while the concrete slab was constructed in factories. The timber beam and concrete slab can be assembled together using screws at the construction site. In this experimental programme, the beam specimens were subjected to constant loading for 613 days in indoor uncontrolled environments. The influence of long-term loading levels and the number of shear connections on the long-term performance of TCC beams was investigated and discussed. The mid-span deflection, timber strain, and interface relative slip at the positions of both connections and beam-ends were recorded throughout the long-term tests. It was found the long-term deflection of the TCC beam increased by approximately 60% while the long-term loads were doubled. Under the influence of the variable temperature and humidity, the TCC specimens with 8 shear connections showed slighter fluctuations compared with the TCC beam with 6 shear connections. In the 613-day observation period, the maximum deflection increment recorded was 6.56 mm for the specimen with eight shear connections and 20% loading level. A rheological model consisting of two Kelvin bodies was employed to fit the curves of creep coefficients. The final deflections predicted of all specimens at the end of 50-year service life were 2.1~2.7 times the initial deflections caused by the applied loads. All beam specimens showed relative small increments in mid-span deflection, strain and relative slip over time without any degradations, demonstrating the excellent long-term performance of TCC beams using the innovative steel plate connection system, which is also easily fabricated.
This paper presents a finite element modeling method for a certain type of nailed joint between glulam beams. The joint in question is a traditional arrangement of a horizontal beam and a vertical pillar but here there is also a nailed steel plate inserted on the two sides in order to strengthen the joint. Experimental results and a comparisons of simulated and experimental results are made. The model includes the elastic and plastic orthotropic behaviour of wood and the elastic and plastic behaviour of nails. The nail joint between the steel plate and the wood is modelled as an elastic-plastic surface to surface connection with elastic-plastic properties. Also the reinforcing effect of nails in the nail-affected volume of wood is taken into consideration by raising rolling shear yield limit in the affected wood volume.The comparisons show that the model works well and give results that are comparable to experimental results.
Cross laminated timber (CLT) connections in shearwalls require an understanding of the shear strength and stiffness of panel-to-panel connections within the wall. This research measures the strength and stiffness of three different panel-to-panel CLT connections considering both monotonic and cyclic loading. Connections included a laminated veneer lumber (LVL) spline, a half-lap connection and a butt joint with overlapping steel plate. All connections were ductile in nature. The butt joint with steel plate demonstrated the highest connection strength of the connections tested. The cyclic stiffness of the laminated veneer lumber spline was less than the monotonic stiffness, while the halflap joint experienced a sharp drop in load after ultimate load was achieved. Full details of the monotonic and cyclic behaviour will be discussed, including load, stiffness and ductility terms.
The wood engineering community has dedicated a significant amount of effort over the last decades to establish a reliable predictive model for the load-carrying capacity of timber connections under wood failure mechanisms. Test results from various sources (Foschi and Longworth 1975; Johnsson 2003; Quenneville and Mohammad 2000; Stahl et al. 2004; Zarnani and Quenneville 2012a) demonstrate that for multi-fastener connections, failure of wood can be the dominant mode. In existing wood strength prediction models for parallel to grain failure in timber connections using dowel-type fasteners, different methods consider the minimum, maximum or the summation of the tensile and shear capacities of the failed wood block planes. This results in disagreements between the experimental values and the predictions. It is postulated that these methods are not appropriate since the stiffness in the wood blocks adjacent to the tensile and shear planes differs and this leads to uneven load distribution amongst the resisting planes (Johnsson 2004; Zarnani and Quenneville 2012a). The present study focuses on the nailed connections. A closed-form analytical method to determine the load-carrying capacity of wood under parallel-to-grain loading in small dowel-type connections in timber products is thus proposed. The proposed stiffness-based model has already been verified in brittle and mixed failure modes of timber rivet connections (Zarnani and Quenneville 2013b).
