Advanced Design of Steel to Timber Bolted Joints

The paper is focused on the topic of steel to timber joints with inserted steel sheet. These joints have significantly higher load-bearing capacity compared to the classic timber joints with timber parts only. In order to study the mechanical behaviour of these joints with inserted steel sheet in tension, experiments were prepared at Czech Technical University in Prague, and the numerical model was created using the ABAQUS code. The test specimens were designed for the most accurate approximation of realistically designed structures based on the recommendation given in the standard. The eight different specimens varied in the diameter of the fastener, the size of the steel washers, the number of rows of fasteners, their spacing and the strength class of the timber. For this experimental study, a set of timber of the C24 strength class and glue-laminated timber of GL24h strength class was prepared. Results of experimental work cover failure modes of timber and diagrams of displacement in control points. In the model, timber was described as an orthotropic elastic material with defined nine independent elastic constants. Contact bonds were defined between the bolts and the timber member as well as between the bolts and the steel based on experiments. Part of the work is dedicated to the verification and validation of the numerical model. The verification of the numerical model was based on the results of the analytical model given in the current design standard. The validation approved the good agreement of the numerical model with results of tension tests, with maximal deviation up to 19 %. © 2021 Ernst & Sohn Verlag für Architektur und technische Wissenschaften GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin.