Welcome back friends, A major difference between timber and reinforced concrete or steel is that most timber elements are simply supported with hinged connections, because moment‑stiff connections are much more difficult to design in timber. But it is possible to design moment stiff timber connections. Timber warehouses and sport halls with frames often have moment stiff connections in their corners. I have also designed a few moment stiff connections like a frame in an industrial hall which...
8 days ago • 5 min read
Welcome back to the Structural Basics newsletter friends, It's been 3 weeks since the last newsletter. I am sorry about that. Work has been busy. I am currently working on 2 schools and a big warehouse. All of them are either in the execution phase or close to that and very different from each other. The warehouse is in precast and in-situ concrete with a few steel structures. One of the schools is partly in timber with steel trusses and a reinforced concrete basement while also being...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Welcome back to the Structural Basics newsletter friends, Today, we'll cover the shear verification of bolted steel-to-timber connections. This type of connection can resist quite some loads as we'll see. But first, I wanted to briefly talk about 2 things: My 1st published podcast. I was invited by Daniel Dlubal to talk on the Dlubal podcast. Dlubal is one of the biggest international companies for finite element software. Some of you might know RFEM and RSTAB. They are one of my favourite FE...
2 months ago • 6 min read
Hello friends, Today, we'll cover the shear verification of screwed steel-to-timber connections. Let's get into it.. The 4 Steps To Calculate The Shear Capacity of Screws According To Eurocode In general we separate 2 types of shear connections in timber design: timber-timber connections and timber-steel connections We already covered all verification formulas of the different failure modes of EN 1995-1-1 (8.6), (8.7), (8.9)-(8.13) in episode #23. You can check out the episode here. In...
3 months ago • 4 min read
Hi friends, Today I want to show you a bracing system of a steel staircase which wasn't designed very well. I was the checking engineer of the project. In Germany there is a second engineering office for most projects checking the structural design / calculations. But the checking engineer only has to check the ULS verifications to make sure that the structure dosn't collapse. SLS checks such as deflections are not part of it. In the following pictures you can see that the columns are...
3 months ago • 2 min read
Happy Wednesday friends, Today, we'll get started with the design verifications of timber shear connections. In this article, we'll cover the shear capacity of nails. Let's get into it.. The 4 Steps To Calculate The Shear Capacity of Nails According To Eurocode In general we separate 2 types of shear connections in timber design: timber-timber connections and timber-steel connections We already covered all verification formulas of the different failure modes of EN 1995-1-1 (8.6), (8.7),...
3 months ago • 4 min read
Hi friends, Today's newsletter won't be technical as I wanted to share with you what I've been up to recently and how the development of module 3 is going. I haven't been working on Structural Basics stuff as much as I usually do for the last 3 months. The reason was that I moved to a new apartment with my girlfriend, I went on a few skiing trips, marathon prep and I got involved with real-estate for the first time. As you are reading this, I’m at the notary’s office signing the contract for...
4 months ago • 2 min read
Happy Wednesday friends, In the last newsletters we covered the tensile capacity of nails, screws, bolts and staples. In the next few episodes, we'll cover the shear capacity of these connectors. This is were the real fun starts as there are many different formulas. In this newsletter I'll give you an overview of the different shear connection types and in the next few episodes we'll dive deeper into the nerdy calculations. Let's get into it.. Overview of the different shear connectors...
4 months ago • 2 min read
Hello friends, Today, we'll cover the tensile capacity of stapled connections. Stapled connections are verified like nails according to EN 1995-1-1 8.4 (1). Therefore today's article will be more of a repetition as we have already verfied a nailed connection for its tensile capacity. Let's get into it.. The 4 Steps To Calculate The Tensile Capacity of Staples According To Eurocode The axial capacity of staples is calculated according to EN 1995-1-1 8.4. But EN 1995-1-1 8.4 (1) refers to EN...
4 months ago • 3 min read