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Decrease projected length of bolts due to bending deformation in timber joints compresses the steel washers onto timber member and increases lateral resistance of the joints. As this lateral strength increase primarily depend on bearing characteristics of timber beneath the steel washers, a finite element analysis was performed to predict their bearing-embedment behavior. A 3-D finite element model consisting of 8-node solid and contact pair elements was developed using ANSYS assuming an anisotropic plasticity model for timber and an elastic-perfectly plastic model for the washers. Material constants for both steel washer and timber member were obtained from previous test data. The results of the analysis were in good agreement with the experimental load-embedment curves as well as the analytical curves obtained in a previous study based on a rigid-body-spring-model. The same approach was also used to evaluate the effective bearing length (under uniform compression) of a 50 mm depth timber block partially compressed.

Improvement of cyclic or dynamic performance of timber connections has been intensively conducted since the overall response of wooden structures is merely a function of joint performance. For a bolted joint, filling the lead-hole clearance with epoxy resin or gluing high embedding-strength materials at the interface of the individual timber member are probably the most common methods. This study presents cyclic test results of moment-resisting joints with a combination of bolts and nails. The nails were placed closer to the joint centroid than the bolts, acting as additional fasteners and were expected to improve the seismic performance of the joints. Static-cyclic test results confirmed the increase of joint stiffness and moment resistance due to the additional nails. The nails contribute to the increase of hysteretic damping significantly though pinching behavior or narrowing the hysteresis loops close to zero rotation points was still observed. The results indicated that contribution of nails or bolts on moment resistance and hysteretic damping can be superimposed.

The effects of pretension in bolts on hysteretic response of timber joints exposed to a bending had been reported by the authors, but the cyclic tests were carried out at small displacement level which might not be applicable for earthquake-resistance design. In this study, similar cyclic tests but at large displacement levels were conducted. Beam to column timber joints with steel side plates were fabricated and continuously loaded until failure. At connection, the bolts were pretension in four different magnitudes: 0 kN, 5 kN, 10 kN and 15 kN. The results showed that frictional action between the steel side plates and wood member as a result of bolt pretensioning significantly increased the (frictional) hysteretic damping and the equivalent viscous damping ratio. It is obvious from the test results that the pretension force in bolts has no influence on the maximum joint resistance but decreases the joint rotational deformation.