Bending behavior of adhesively-bonded engineered wood-concrete composite decks

Abstract

Four-point bending tests were conducted on five medium-sized (i.e., 2300 mm in length and 215 mm in width) engineered timber (laminated veneer lumber (LVL) and cross-laminated timber (CLT)) - concrete (wood chip concrete and plain concrete) composite decks. The concrete was glued to the wood substrate with epoxy and polyurethane adhesives. The observed failure modes of the composite decks were concrete crushing or wood failure in tension or shear. No failure of the adhesive interface was observed and the decks behaved linearly until failure. In the subsequent analysis, the authors quantified the shear flexibility of transverse layers (stressed perpendicular to the fiber direction) in CLT and LVL boards and its effect on the bending stiffness on the composite decks using γ-method described in EN 1995-1-1 (EC5). The analytical predictions of the effective bending stiffness were verified via experiments, showing consistently good agreement.