Mechanical Role of Dowel in Wooden Connection in Tibetan Ancient Architecture

Compared to traditional Chinese ancient timber structures,the beam-column connection of Tibetan ancient architecture features in simple connections,direct load transmission paths and concise constructions.Mortise-tenon and dougong connections are rarely used in Tibetan ancient architectures.The beam-column connection joint is formed by laminated members with dowels.In this paper,a refined nonlinear FEM model was established and the mechanical role of dowels were studied.A spring model was obtained finally to present dowel properties.The results showed that dowels could increase the initial slip stiffness slightly and improve the bearing capacity of member relative sliding greatly.