Research on Mechanical Properties of Main Joints of Chinese Traditional Timber Buildings with the Type of Post-and-Lintel Construction

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe mechanical properties of Chinese traditional timber buildings with the type of post-and-lintel construction were studied with experimental and theoretical method. There are mainly two types of mortise-tenon joints in the type of post-and-lintel construction which are the Mantou mortise-tenon joint and the Zhi mortise-tenon joint at the foot of short column respectively. In this article, two scaled Mantou mortise-tenon joint specimens and three scaled Zhi mortise-tenon joint specimens designed according to the actual configurations were tested and analyzed. The failure modes, hysteresis curves, skeleton curves, and in-plane rotational rigidity of these two types of mortise-tenon joints under low cyclic loading were obtained. The results show that the hysteretic curves of the Mantou mortise-tenon joints appear to be Z shape and have obvious pinch effects, but the hysteresis curves of the Zhi mortise-tenon joints at the foot of short column appear to be reverse S shape and are not plump. During the process of the test, these two types of mortise-tenon joints orderly pass through elastic stage, yield stage, and failure stage. Furthermore, with the consideration of the nonlinear contact influence of the mortise-tenon joint and the nonlinear stress-strain behavior of the timber material, the mechanical properties of these two types of mortise-tenon joints were analyzed by ANSYS software. The theoretical results agreed well with the experimental results. The relationship of the elastic in-plane rotational rigidity, elastic out-of-plane rotational rigidity, and elastic torsional rigidity of these two types of mortise-tenon joints were achieved, the ratio of these three dimensional rotation rigidity is about 4.64:1.00:0.78 for the Mantou mortise-tenon joints, and is about 0.97:1.00:0.74 for the Zhi mortise-tenon joints at the foot of short column. The results can provide theoretical base for structural analysis and repair design of the Chinese traditional timber buildings with the type of post-and-lintel construction.