Cyclic behavior and reinforcement of moment-resisting bolted glulam joints with cracks

Abstract This paper experimentally explored the influence of cracks on cyclic behavior of moment-resisting bolted glulam joints, and investigated the strengthening of self-tapping screws and friction dampers. Under reversed cyclic loading, the failure modes and hysteresis curves of pre-cracked specimens have been presented and analyzed in this paper. It was found that initial cracks not only led to the decrease in the moment capacity and elastic stiffness , but also impaired the ductility behavior and energy dissipated capacity of bolted glulam joints. The ductility ratio and accumulated energy dissipation can be reduced by 30% and 60%, respectively. With the installation of self-tapping screws and friction dampers, significant enhancement was observed in the above mentioned mechanical parameters of pre-cracked bolted joints . The elastic stiffness and energy dissipation are improved by 144% and 613%, respectively. Further, an analytical model is applied to calculate moment capacity of strengthened bolted joints and validated by experimental results.