Design procedure for the lateral resistance of tension splice joints in MPC wood trusses

A recommended design procedure for determining the required plate length to prevent lateral-resistance (tooth-withdrawal) failure of a metal-plate-connected (MPC) tension splice joint is presented. Using truss plates with the calculated minimum required length will practically ensure that the joint will fail in the steel net-section, where the bending moment present at the joint can be explicitly included in the design. In addition to the recommended procedure, a simple rule-of-thumb is given that will yield a conservative value ofthe required plate length.