Lateral Resisting Experiment of Prestressed-Tube Bolted Connection for Post-and-Beam Timber Construction

摘要

Connections are key elements and the weak points for timber structures. The most commonly used bolted timber connections with slotted in steel plate have low lateral stiffness in post-and-beam construction. This paper introduces the prestressed-tube bolted connection to alleviate this problem. To evaluate its lateral resisting performance, the failure mode, strength, lateral stiffness, ductility, hysteresis curve and equivalent viscous damping ratio of the ordinary and improved connections, as determined by the monotonic and reversed cyclic loading test, are compared. The results demonstrate that the lateral stiffness of the prestressed-tube bolted connection has been significantly improved, especially for initial stiffness. It is believed that the semi-rigid prestressed-tube bolted connection, as an alternative to current bolted solutions, may provide reasonable lateral stiffness and has good potential for use in post-and-beam timber construction.