Abstract
The mortise and tenon joints are the main connection forms used in ancient timber buildings, and damaged joints have a critical effect on the safety of a timber structure. There are three main damaged cases of dovetail joints which are pulling, contraction, and mixing damages. In this study, using a theoretical analysis of the stress distribution in a mortise and tenon joint resulted from the pullout damage, a theoretical equation for the resisting moment of the joint was proposed. A finite element model was used to simulate the cyclic displacement loading of a frame with intact joints and with different levels of pulling and contraction damaged joints. The results show that the moment capacities both for the test and the simulation were in good agreement with each other. The simulation results also indicated that there are no changes in the capacity and energy dissipation of the pulling damaged joint compared to that of the intact joint, and good seismic performance still was provided when the pulling damage was less than 2/5 of the joint length. However, the capacity of the contraction damaged joint was significantly reduced, and its seismic performance was tolerably lost. The seismic performance of a mixing damaged tenon with the same degree of pulling damage was between that of the pulling damaged tenon and the contraction damaged tenon, and generally, it was controlled by the contraction damage. The friction between the tenon and the mortise is the main source of resisting moment and energy dissipation ability.
Highlights
Ese characteristics have typically been exhibited through lateral loading tests of timber frames incorporating mortise and tenon joints [9,10,11,12,13], in which a vertical load is applied to the top of the columns to simulate a gravity load, and a lateral cyclic load is applied by a horizontal actuator using displacement control
Wu al. [16] subjected a typical dovetail joint model to low-cycle cyclic loading to evaluate the behaviors of the semirigid connection and its stiffness degeneration properties
Zhou et al [17] analyzed the seismic performance of a four-column, four-beam model based on the frame of a hall in the Forbidden City under low-cycle cyclic loading, Advances in Civil Engineering
Summary
Timber structures have been used widely around the world throughout the history, including China, Japan, Korea, Canada, the USA, and northern Europe [1, 2]. ese connections mainly include the straight tenon joints (Figure 1(a)) and the dovetail joints (Figure 1(b)). e mortise and tenon connections are the most important connections in ancient timber structures and have been demonstrated to exhibit semirigid characteristics [3,4,5,6,7,8]. Ese characteristics have typically been exhibited through lateral loading tests of timber frames incorporating mortise and tenon joints [9,10,11,12,13], in which a vertical load is applied to the top of the columns to simulate a gravity load, and a lateral cyclic load is applied by a horizontal actuator using displacement control. Wu et al [23] evaluated tenon pulling damage by conducting a vertical load test of a mortise and tenon joint using four groups of typical single dovetail joint frame models to obtain the elastic modulus and the variation in stiffness under both static load and applied deflection. By comparing the results of the theoretical and numerical analyses, the changes in the seismic performance of the joints after damage can be illustrated, assisting conservation efforts by improving the ability of restoration workers to evaluate the condition of ancient timber structures
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