Timber-steel hybrid structures with shear-key connections

Sammanfattning: Large-dimensional wooden products are highly demanded within the construction sector. Theprimary motive of the thesis is to find a solution to connect small timber elements by meansof special steel devices. It is auspicable that the resulting hybrid structure could match theload-carrying capacity of a corresponding homogenous timber element with the same size.The focus in this thesis is to study one type of shear-key connection. Three types of beams(pure glulam beam, hybrid beam either with or without the splice connection at mid-span) arestudied regarding their structural behaviours by means of theoretical analysis, numericalmodelling and experimental tests.Hybrid beam without the splice connection shows higher bearing capacity and higher stiffnessthan pure glulam beam no matter which method is used. The structural behaviours for hybridbeam without the splice connection obtained from each method are more or less similarexcept the failure mode.Hybrid beam with the splice connection shows the bearing capacity higher than pure glulambeam but lower than hybrid beam without the splice connection. The stiffness for hybrid beamwith the splice connection is approximately the same as that of the pure glulam beam basedon analytical and numerical calculation. However, around 30% - 40% lower stiffness isachieved in experiment. Factors that might influence the result are discussed in the main text.Two analytical methods (Partial composite action (PCA) Method and Gamma Method) areutilized for hybrid beam without the splice connection. Although Gamma method is asimplified method, the results are similar with that from PCA method. Therefore, GammaMethod is reliable to be used for the hybrid beam without the splice connection in this thesisproject.In addition, it is found that the alignment of shear-key connectors, slip modulus betweenshear-key and notch, diameter of rod and the vertical distance between glulam and rod areconsidered as the main sensitivity parameters that would influence the structural behaviours for hybrid beams a lot.