Veneer-based timber circular hollow section beams: Behaviour, modelling and design

Abstract

Various forms of timber hollow structural profiles have either been proposed in the literature or are already commercially available. Tests performed on Circular Hollow Section (CHS) beams showed failure modes not usually encountered in timber structures. For relatively thin-walled profiles, a sudden failure in the compression zone, with the opening of the cross-section, was observed. To confidently use and market CHS timber products, design rules considering all possible failure modes must be developed. This paper presents a Finite Element (FE) model of CHS timber beams which captures all experimentally observed failure modes. Cohesive zone elements were used to model the quasi-brittle failure modes of the timber material. The model was validated against ten experimental tests performed on CHS of three different cross-sectional slenderness and manufactured from juvenile hardwood Gympie messmate (Eucalyptus cloeziana) rotary peeled veneers. The model was found to accurately capture the measured structural behaviour and resulted in an average experimental-to-predicted bending capacity ratio of 1.02. The model was also used to explain the mechanisms leading to the sudden compressive failure mode. A parametric study was finally performed on 72 CHS beams of different cross-sectional slenderness. Results showed a strong correlation between the cross-sectional slenderness ratio and section capacity. Design rules are proposed and discussed.