Durability of joints made with threaded steel rods glued in chestnut timber. An experimental approach

Abstract

This paper presents the results of an experimental study developed on joints made with glued-in rods in glued laminated chestnut, with the rods inserted parallel to the grain. Three anchor lengths have been used. The test pieces have been submitted to pull-compression test until failure after three different previous conditionings: preservation in a normalized atmosphere, artificial accelerated weathering cycles, and climate conditioning under uniform service load. The results indicate that the aging cycles lead to drops of stiffness and pull-out strength in the joints with usual anchorage lengths in practice. Therefore, there is not a significant difference in the value of those losses due to the action of the service load during the accelerated weathering cycles.