Structural fire performance of wood-steel-wood bolted connections with and without perpendicular-to-wood grain reinforcement

What is it about?

In fire condition, the time to failure of a timber connection is mainly reliant on the wood charring rate, the strength of the residual wood section, and the limiting temperature of the steel connectors involved in the connection. The purpose of this study is to experimentally investigate the effects of loaded bolt end distance, number of bolt rows, and existence of perpendicular-to-wood grain reinforcement on the structural fire behaviour of semi-rigid glued-laminated timber (glulam) beam-to-column connections that utilized steel bolts and concealed steel plate connectors. The invaluable experimental data obtained from this study can be effectively used to provide insight and better understanding on how mass-timber glulam bolted connections can behave in fire condition. This can also help in further improving the existing design guidelines for mass-timber structures.

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