EXPERIMENTAL STUDY ON BEARING CAPACITY OF BOLTED STEEL-PSB-STEEL CONNECTIONS

Because of the advantage of the simple fabrication, high security and construction convenience, the bolted connection is widely applied in modern engineered bamboo and wood structures. In order to investigate the mechanical behavior of the bolted steel-Parallel strand bamboo-steel connections, twelve groups of specimens were tested under uniaxial tensile load. The effects of thickness to diameter ratio, fastener spacing and the end distance on the failure modes and the bearing capacity were reported in the paper. The results indicate that the failure mode of single and multi-bolted connections is the occurrence of one plastic hinge when the thickness to diameter ration is 5.0-5.7, and the occurrence of two plastic hinges when the thickness to diameter ration is 8.0-10.0. As the fastener diameter, spacing or the end distance increases, the bearing capacity gradually increases. The bolted connections with one column show good ductility, which gets worse as the number of columns increases. Comparing the experimental results with the calculations using the domestic code for wood structure, wood structure design manual and Eurocode 5, it was found that the domestic code is conservative and the Eurocode 5 has better applicability.