Experimental Study on Nail Joint Shearing Properties of Light Frame Wooden Shear Walls

Shear walls in light wooden frame structure are major components to resist lateral loading. Nail joint is one of the most important factors that affects shear walls shearing properties. In this paper, different nail types, sheathing panel types and thickness and stud grain direction were set to study the influence factors of nail joint properties. Wooden shear walls made of studs with different cross size were monotonic and cyclic loaded to investigate the influence on lateral resistance properties. The failure of nail joint can be classified into three modes that nails bent and withdrawn from the studs, nail heads pulled off from the panels and nails split off along the stud grain. It is concluded from the nail joint loading and displacement results that twist nails get the largest bearing capacity compared with strip nails and coil nails due to the nail diameter and larger friction. Nail joints on China-produced structural plywood obtain the largest shearing resistance values among three different kinds of panels. And thicker panels can bear larger shearing loadings. The largest displacement of the nail joints load parallel to stud grain were larger than those perpendicular to stud grain. It can be derived from the shear wall lateral loading experiments that the lateral resistance of the shear wall could not be strengthened with the larger stud size, while the stiffness and energy capacity could be improved. In this way, the seismic resistance properties of shear walls can be enhanced by optimizing nail joint materials and studs parameters.