Analysis of wood‐composite laminated frames under dynamic loads—analytical models and model validation. Part I: connection model

This paper describes the analytical models of timber connections that were used to simulate the full time-history response of moment-resisting frames subjected to dynamic loads. Special attention was paid to connection modeling to capture the hysteretic damping that significantly affected the performance of the system subjected to dynamic forces. To model the hysteretic properties of the dowel-type connections a combination of bilinear springs and gaps was used. This approach allows the modeling of various hysteretic shapes including pinching, asymmetric behavior, contact phenomena, and an initial slip of the fasteners. Load–deformation curves obtained from the cyclic experiments of small- and full-scale joints were used to extract the model parameters. The hysteretic models were verified by comparing the simulation with the experimental data obtained from cyclic tests. The comparison reveals that the presented approach can be successfully used to simulate the load-history-dependent behavior of timber joints, provided that strength degradation is negligible and a brittle failure does not occur. The predictive ability of a 3D frame model will be demonstrated in Part II by comparing the simulation with the results of shake table experiments.