Variability analysis of bolted glulam beam-to-column connections
Wang Mingqian1,2 Song Xiaobin1,2 Gu Xianglin1,2 Yin Xiaojing2
1. Key Laboratory of Performance Evolution and Control for Engineering Structures of the Ministry of Education,
Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China; 2. College of Civil Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China
Abstract：Bolted glulam beam-to-column connections often exhibit significant variability due to the variation of material properties and manufacture tolerances. Variability analysis was conducted to determine the key factors of variability and establish the prediction models of the initial stiffness and moment resistance of the connections. A deterministic finite element method based model was primarily developed and validated by test results. Stochastic finite element method was then adopted to calculate the connection initial stiffness and moment resistance with consideration of random distributions of wood material parameters and bolt hole clearances. The key factors of the initial connection stiffness and moment resistance were determined based on the variance analysis results. Response surface functions of the initial connection stiffness and moment resistance were established based on polynomial regression fitting method. Variance analysis results indicate that, regarding the initial stiffness of the connections, the elastic modulus (parallel- and perpendicular-to-wood-grain directions) of the wood foundation model had a significant impact, and the bolt hole clearance is also influential to the initial stiffness to a certain extent. The tension strength perpendicular-to-wood-grain and longitudinal shear strength have a significant effect on the variance of the connection’s moment resistance, and the bolt hole clearance also has an influence on the connection’s moment resistance. Simulated results regarding randomly generated samples show that the response surface equations can be used to accurately predict the connection initial stiffness and the moment resistance.
