Behaviour of nailed timber-plywood connections under monotonic and cyclic loading

Nailed connections, timber, plywood, strength, ductility, monotonic loads, cyclic loadsABSTRACTNailed timber-plywood connections are critical components in plywood shear walls to provide shear wallstrength, stiffness, ductility and energy dissipation. In this study, a total of eight connection types consistingof nails with three sizes (ø2.8×60, ø3.15×75, and ø3.55×90) and plywood sheets with three thicknesses (12mm,17mm, and 25mm) were experimentally tested under monotonic and cyclic loading. The connection properties interms of strength, stiffness and ductility were derived based on the load-slip curves of the connections to studythe influence of nail size, plywood thickness, load-grain angle and loading type on the connection performance.Experimental results showed all the connection types had very ductile behaviour under monotonic and cyclicloading. The overstrength factor of 1.6 provided in NZS 3603 was also applicable for these nailed connectionswith relatively thick plywood panels. It was also found that the connection strength was mainly affected by thenail size and the increase of plywood thickness from 12mm to 17mm or 25mm did not change the connectionstrength significantly.