Complete issue (May 2012)

One of the Institution's largest Regional Groups places strong emphasis on CPD...

Topics of importance openly discussed...

This paper presents an experimental programme conducted to investigate the behaviour of bonded-in BFRP bars loaded parallel to the grain of glulam members. Tensile pull-out tests were conducted to examine the effect of bonded length and bond stress-slip on the structural capacity of the connection. An analytical design expression for predicting pull-out capacity is proposed and the results have been compared with some established design equations. It was found that pull-out load increased approximately linearly with the bonded length, up to maximum which occurred at a bonded length of 15 times the hole diameter, and did not increase beyond this bonded length. The most significant failure modes were failure at the timber/adhesive interface followed by pull-out of the BFRP rod. Increased bonded lengths resulted in higher bond slip values compared to lower equivalent bonded lengths. The proposed design model gave the best predictions of pull-out capacity compared with other existing models.