Civil Engineering Dimension
Vol. 17 No. 1 (2015): MARCH 2015

Analytical Approach to Predict Pre–Camber Deflection of the Pre-stressed Glulam Beams

Buan Anshari (Department of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Mataram University, Jl. Majapahit No. 62, Mataram 83125)



Article Info

Publish Date
20 Mar 2015

Abstract

A new approach to reinforce glulam timber beams using compressed wood (CW) has been developed by the Author. The compressed wood blocks are inserted into pre-cut holes on the top of glulam beams to produce pre-camber and to generate initial tensile and compressive stresses on the top and on the bottom extreme fiber of the glulam beam, respectively. A simple analytical approach has been developed to predict pre-camber deflections of the beams reinforced with three CW blocks. Assuming that moisture-dependent expansion of the CW block creates an interactive linear pressure between the glulam beam and the CW block, this would generate a pair of eccentric force away from the neutral axis of the beam. It is shown that the pre-camber deflection predicted at midspan of the short beams with various reinforcing arrangements give good agreement with the measured pre-camber from previous experimental results.

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