Full-scale (industrial) wood floor using welded-through dowels

Abstract

High-speed dowel rotation welding was used to fabricate a full-scale suspended floor, an applicable civil-engineering structure, to demonstrate that scaling up of such welding technique was feasible. This was coupled with obtaining a more light-weight floor assembly with equal stiffness by maximizing the rigidity of the suspended floor while minimizing the number of timber planks used to build it, and maintaining its vibration frequency high and its level of vibration low. Several assembly and connection combinations of two and three slats linked through welded wood dowels were tried to determine the mechanical resistance of the cross-over joints that had to be used in the building of the floor. Deformation under 4-point static load of the floor was carried out to determine displacement under load and the floor vibration behaviour was determined by the use of accelerometers. The fundamental first natural frequency measured does satisfy well the requirements specified by Eurocode 5.