Carpentry connections

Training school on assessment and reinforcement of timber elements

Thierry DESCAMPS

University of Mons - Belgium

Faculty of engineering - Department of Structural Mechanics
Universit de Mons

What is it ?
What about strength ?
Design and reinforcement

What about stiffness?

Structural assessment of old timber structures

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Timber frameworks
Widespread
Natural material (timber):
Variability
Decay and MC

Structural complexity:
Complex geometry and joints (more complex than
masonries ?)
A simplified analysis considering only plane parts of
the system, is often hard to realize or completely
impossible.
Geometry and joints are characteristic of
An area and a period of time
Carpenters and engineers knowledge: daring
engineering !
Mind blowing timbre structures are not always
new !

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Carpentry joints
Carpentry joints connect timber elements, often without any dowel type fasteners.
Forces are transferred within the joints via contact pressure and friction. The smart
cutting of the joint by the carpenter create notches and contact surfaces between the
connected members.
Within the connections, there is an interaction in terms of stiffness and strength between
the different pathways in which the forces are transferred.
Eccentricities are inherent in this kind of connections to be considered.
Carpentry connections can be classified in families but there is a huge amount of
carpentry joints probably as much as major timber buildings and carpenters.

Lets have a look at some carpentry joints (non exhaustive)

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Pinned Tenon and

mortise (wooden pegs)

Pin number and placement varied

with the size of the member
and the preferences of carpenter
Drawings: Sobon J. A

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If one piece (here the post) is wider than the the

other, the tenon can be housed into it.
The tenon can be centered or be flush with the
layout face of the post.

Through tenon with outside wedges

(flatwise bending of the tenon)
Drawings: Sobon J. A

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From tenon and mortise joints to dovetails joints

Wedged Dovetail Through Mortise and Tenon

Partially housed wedged dovetail

through mortise and tenon
Drawings: Sobon J. A

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Through Mortise and Tenon with Dovetailed Shoulder

Drawings: Sobon J. A

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Inverted lapped dovetail

Lapped half-dovetail girder joint

Drawings: Sobon J. A

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Notched beams (the simplest joint to craft and insert, and

consequently the most common)

Drawings: Sobon J. A

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Halved scarf with four pins (simplest to fashion).

Halved and undersquinted scarf

(to improve bending strength and resistance
to seasoning twist)
Drawings: Sobon J. A

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Halved and bladed scarf

with pinned tenons

Halved, bladed and cogged scarf

(helps align the scarf and increases its bending
strength against horizontal loads)

Drawings: Sobon J. A

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Splayed scarf joint (the lapped surfaces are sloping).

The sloped, lapped portion is

stopped before it feathers out to
nothing.
Compared with the half-lap,
shear strength is vastly improved
by the sloped surface.

Drawings: Sobon J. A

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Splayed, undersquinted and cogged scarf joint

Drawings: Sobon J. A

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Splayed, Undersquinted and Wedges

P. Lemlyn
Wedges act as a reinforcement.
The tensile capacity, torsion, and
bending strength in both directions are
greatly increased (cog).
The pins (and their position) increase the
joints overall performance.
The butts need not be undersquinted.

Drawings: Sobon J. A

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The conscientious builder locates the scarf where bending forces are low...

Splayed with Wedges and Multiple lapped surfaces

Drawings: Sobon J. A

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What is it ?
What about strength ?
Design and reinforcement

What about stiffness?

Structural assessment of old timber structures

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Step joints (rafter and tie-beam

joints or purlin plate)

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Step joints
the slope of the notch must minimize the angle between the stresses and the grain direction
for both connected elements (bisector)
the depth of the notch (tv) should not exceed h/4 for skew angles 50 and h/6 for skew
angles > 60 (Gtz et al (1993), DIN 1052:2004 and CTE (2006)).

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Precompression of horizontal beam due to N !

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Support reaction

N tie beam

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The rear face under compression (F2) is generally neglected !

However, Parisi and Piazza (2000) suggest to consider a reduced length d

(possible concentration of high stresses in a limited length)

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1
3

Single posterior step

3 points to check

Crack ?

Gap

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Reinforcement of step joints

(a) binding strip; (b) internal bolt; (c) stirrup; (d) tension ties - Branco (2011).
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15
c

10

= 1.4 MPa

F F
+

Force (kN)

Unstrengthened +

Unstrengthened Binding strip +

-5

Binding strip Stirrup +

-10

Stirrup Bolt +

-15

Bolt Tension ties +

-20

Tension ties -

-25
-50

-40

-30

-20

-10

10

20

30

40

50

Displacement (mm)

Force-displacement curves for unstrengthened and strengthened connections

with a 30 skew angle under monotonic loading. Branco et al (2011)
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10
8
6

Force (kN)

= 1.4 MPa

F F
+

2
Unstrengthend +

Unstrengthend Tension ties +

-2

Tension ties -

-4

Stirrup +
Stirrup -

-6

Bolt +

-8

Bolt -

-10
-50

-40

-30

-20

-10

10

20

30

40

50

Displacement (mm)

Force-displacement curves for unstrengthened and strengthened connections

with a 60 skew angle under monotonic loading. Branco et al (2011)
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Dovetail joints

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Rounded Dovetail joint

Development thanks to CNC wood-processing machinery
Esthetic
Easy to use on site (plug and play joint)

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From experimental researches, Werner proposed a design guideline (Werner, 2002).

Since rounded dovetail joints can fail either by breaking of the joist or main beam, the
two members are designed separately:

!* +,

!"#

2
. '( .
3

0,09. /

),

!*

/( 0

(Valle et al, 2010).

Where A1 is the effective dovetail area.

hmain, h1 and b1 are in mm and F is in kN, and:
'(

4
0
tan
. /(
(
2

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. /(

0 5.

Tannert proposed later on a design guideline that takes into account the size effect
for timber strength in brittle failure (Tannert, 2008).
As rounded dovetails joints are very similar to end notched beam supports, he
proposed a modified design formula based on Eurocode 5 formula for notched
beams with the definition of a specific reduction factor kv (EN 1995:2005).

1,5 . 8
'(

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),

3,6::
.
'(

Reinforcement of rounded dovetails

The failure is typically brittle, and occurs in the elastic range reinforcements needed:
tuning the geometry (to reduce stress concentrations)
using additional reinforcements

Reinforcement with self-tapping screws at an angle of 45 (left);

reinforcement with an adhesive layer between joist and beam (middle);
combination of self-tapping screws and adhesive layer (right). (Tannert 2012).
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Reinforcement with self tapping screws is very efficient (increase stiffness, capacity of
connections perpendicular to the grain and produce a more ductile failure mode)
In that case, when the performance is governed by the joist member, capacity can be
estimated similar to the capacity of end notched beam supports (see Blass et al 2001).
Consequently, screw withdrawal capacity Rax,k and tensile strength Ru,k dictate the
capacity Vk of a beam support according to (DIN-1052 2004):

8;

. min >

1,3 . 3. 1

?,; , >@,;

/, //

2. 1

/,

/

Where h is the beam height, he is the beam height minus the notch height
and n is the number of screws.

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Tenon and
mortise joints

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Tenon and mortise joint

The bearing capacity of tapered tenon joints is a function of the angle
of the connection, and length of the toe and mortise depth (Aman et
al, 2008, Judd et al, 2012, Litos et al, 2012).

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If F is the normal force in the strut

the compressive force at the bottom surface is

sin D

EF cos D
EF EI

cos D 0 EF
D
:
1 EF EI

the compressive force at the front side is:

J

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KL D 0

EI 8

m is the ratio of Q to F

Additionally, H is the coefficient of friction at the front side, V the coefficient of

friction at the bottom face, the connection angle, hs the height of the strut, ls the
length of the strut and tx the distance between the bottom surface and the loading
point of H.

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What is it ?
What about strength ?
Design and reinforcement

What about stiffness?

Structural assessment of old timber structures

Universit de Mons

Old timber frameworks

Widespread
Natural material (timber):
Variability (in the same frame)
Decay

Structural complexity:
Complexity of the global geometry and the connections.
(more complex than masonries ?)

Lack of technical data's :

Sections (+ variations)
Strength classes (visual on site strength grading)
Joints (contact areas, nodes, cracks)

Structural assessment and morpho-chronology:

A good understanding of the history of the structure is
necessary .
+ dendochronology

Drawings P. Lemlyn

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Component method
Prediction of the stiffness of the joint. For M, N and V :
Definition of a model statically equivalent.
Each component is an area where contact appears .
A stiffness is associated to each component.

Equivalent spring model !

Three areas of contact appear when the
connection is bend (M+) !

The component 11 is the pair of surfaces 1 and 1,

respectively belonging to timber elements A and B.
ICR = peg

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This component is composed of two stiffnesses as 1

correspond to a compression parallel to grain for the
element A and 1 is perpendicular to the grain?

It is now possible to compute the global stiffness:

Stiffness of two surfaces in contact. If k refers to the component i,j :
Fj

F F
k = j + i =
+ i = k
k j ki k k

kk =

1
1

i , j ki

Springs acting in series for any component (pair of

surfaces in contact)!
How to get this stiffness ?
It is not directly E !

The stiffness is obtained by means of the theoretical

deformation of an elastic half.

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Total rotational stiffness :

Under the assumption of small rotations :

ktot =

F z
k

k
k

zk

k (z ) z
k

= kk zk2
k

The global rotational stiffness can easily be estimated

from the geometry and the stiffness of all pairs of
surfaces in contact.

Limitations of the method (strictly analytical) :

The deformation of contact surface can not be estimated
as it is an infinite half space of wood !

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First enhancement of the method: Assumption of an infinite half space ?

First method: FEM
A cut factor Cm,E is defined with the help of elastic finite
element models (FEM) using an orthotropic material,
contact and different slenderness of contact areas

Second method: additional length effect

Komatsu (2009) proposed a pure analytical
correction in his study on traditional Japanese
mud shear wall.

Nuki joint Nuki effect

modified analytical model

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Equilibrium of forces and a additional length effect Komatsu 2009

Moreover, Komatsu proposed a post yielding behaviour which allows the definition of a poly-linear
M relationship.

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Comparison of initial stiffness obtained from analytical and experimental results

(Chang 2007)
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The comparison between this first enhanced

model and experimentations is disappointing :

M+

Stiffness
[N.m/mr
ad]

M-

FEM

Component
method

Experime
ntation

FEM

Component
method

Experimen
tation

13.95

66.38

12.08

4.32

18.66

5.43

FEM and experimentation on real size

connections give good results.
Component method largely overestimate the
stiffness
Once again, observations made on real size tests
(broken peg) suggest that the peg is not the center of
rotation of the connection

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Second enhancement of the method:

A geometrical research field is defined and an iterative process is implemented. Lets call u, v and the
displacements and rotation of any point into this field.
For each supposed position of ICR, displacements of contact area are computed.
From their stiffness it is possible to computed the contact forces :

Fi =

y2

y1

ki
i dl = f ( u , v, )
li

Resulting forces at the tenon is :

V k11

N = k21
M k
31

k12
k22
k32

k13 u

k23 v
k33

We finally solve this system and the ICR is then supposed to be the point for which the computed
displacement is minimum.

u + v
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Why this focus on stiffness ?

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1. Influence on the design of the joint

Equivalent model
The joint is statically indeterminate !

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2. Influence on the design of the whole structure

Most of the time, connections are supposed to be

moment free (hinges). This assumption :
Simplifies the computations
Is safe as it overestimate the bending moments and the
deflections
What is true only if we also assume that all connections have a sufficient
capacity of deformation in rotation (without any major cracks)

Most of the carpentry connections are not hinges !

Do we have to take care of that ?
Statically indeterminate structure:
the elements will carry loads in
proportion to their relative stiffness

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reduction of 50 % !

7,6 m

7,96 m

fortified castle of Ecaussinnes-Lalaing

5,6 m
All are statically indeterminate
frames: 7x

13,33 m

Cathedral O-L of Tournai

6,35 m

8,9 m

Abbatiale de la Paix-Dieu
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Chteau dEcaussinnes-Lalaing
Borne infrieure

Borne suprieure

Hinge

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Carpent.

Dowels

Stiff.

Bending
stiffness

Variations de contraintes en fonction de la rigidit de lassemblage

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K. CANT et F. MIGNONE |

Service de gnie civil et mcanique des structures

59

Abbatiale de la Paix-Dieu

Hinge

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Carpent.

Dowels

Stiff.

Bending
stiffness

Cathedrale O-L of Tournai

Hinge

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Carpent.

Dowels

Stiff.

Bending
stiffness

In restoration; keeping the same stiffness should be a

goal too
Is it always necessary ?

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Thank you for your

attention

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