New reinforcements combining a steel plate and screws to enhance beam-column contact surfaces for prestressed timber joints

The beam-column contact surface of joints in prestressed timber frames is one of the key factors determining structural performance. In this paper, a new reinforcement combining a steel plate and screws was proposed, and the effect of the reinforcements on the performance of joints was investigated by quasistatic tests for 5 beam-column edge joints. First, compared with the conventional joint, the joints reinforced by the steel plate and screws had an average increase in capacity of 25.8% and an average reduction in the degradation rate of the secant stiffness of 14.5%, which were beneficial for resisting repetitive loading. Then, the rate of the final prestressing loss and residual drift of the joint reinforced by the flat steel plate and screws were reduced by 20.5% and 85.7%, respectively, compared with those of the conventional joint. The enhancement effect of the reinforcement combining a U-shaped steel plate and screws was difficult to realize due to the susceptibility to the initial clearance. Finally, the mechanical mechanism of the new reinforcement was clarified, and a method for calculating the compression zone height of the beam in joints with the reinforcement was suggested, which improved the calculation accuracy by 13.7%.