Duration of load behaviour of a glued shear plate dowel joint

An experimental study on the duration of load effects in a glued shear plate dowel joint was conducted. The joint design features a single large diameter dowel for load transfers between members, via external steel plates, which are bonded to the timber with a low stiffness bond line. Due to the low bond line stiffness, the timber element is subjected to a close to uniform shear stress distribution over the bond area. The study comprises a total of 80 test specimens loaded in shear, both parallel and perpendicular to the grain, at three load levels in the range of 50–80% of the short-term failure load. All specimens failed within approximately 110 days in outdoor sheltered conditions during which time deformations were recorded for one specimen of each type and load level. The study found a significantly larger influence of duration of load for this dominant shear action than what is reported in the literature for bending tests. The method of ranked stress was used to determine a suggested reduction factor kmod for the shear plate dowel joint to 0.10 and 0.30 for parallel and perpendicular loading, respectively. This is a rough estimate based upon a 50-year extrapolation of 4-month data. Thus, it must be concluded that the studied shear plate dowel joint is not efficient in terms of long-duration loads in outdoor sheltered climate, and that further studies are needed in order to verify the use in other climates. It is also evident in this study that there is a lack of knowledge and empirical evidence on the duration of load effects in timber for shear loading.