Assessing the Performance of Wooden Dowels in Pure Wood Connections

Abstract

In light of global climate challenges, wood offers compelling environmental advantages: it binds carbon dioxide, produces oxygen, and it’s renewable. This thesis explores the feasibility and implications of utilizing sustainable, wood-based alternatives in timber connections, aiming to contribute to the evolution of environmentally friendly construction practices. Today, the most common method for designing timber connections involves using slottedin metal plates with steel-dowelled connectors. This approach increases greenhouse gas emissions due to its energy-demanding production and poses challenges for end-of-life disposal. By enhancing the mechanical properties of wood through densification,it could be a good alternative to steel. The aim is to effectively design a timber-to-timber connection without using metal fasteners by experimentally extracting the characteristic embedment strength, bending strength, and shear strength values. Analytical models will be compared with experimental results focusing on glulam, plywood, birch, and densified wood dowels. Notably, densified wood dowels exhibited significantly higher strength and stiffness compared to birch dowels. The resistance was occasionally 50% higher than anticipated from the Eurocode. In other words, the analytical estimations had varying results concerning accuracy. The predicted capacity of a pure-wood, timber-to-timber connection was generally accurate, with birch being the best fit. But the expected embedment strength needed some adjustment for both dowels.