Experimental and numerical investigations on timber joints with glued-in FRP rods

Glued-in rods are a very effective method to connect timber members; they are, however, not yet as widely used as they could, partially for a lack of design guidance. Joints based thereupon, inclueding those using fibre reinforced polymers (FRP) bars, have a series of advantages, e.g., the formation of very strong and stiff connections, very high fire resistance, and improved aestethics. Experimental investigations were carried out on joints compossed of timber and glued in glass-FRP rods. A total of 155 specimes with two different timber species, two different adhesives and variety of different embedment lenghts and rod diameters were produced overlap length up to an apparent maximum and that capacity is directly correlated to rod diameter. Two radically different adhesives have been udes: a very stiff and brittle epoxy, and a much softer ductile polyurethane. Besides the experimental results, numerical simulation of all experimental series, inclueding a prediction of their capacities is presented.