Cyclic Testing of a Novel Buckling-Restrained Connection for Mass Timber Structures
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Seismic design of tall mass timber structures continues to be challenging because of the limitations associated with the stiffness, strength, ductility, and energy dissipation capacity of traditional timber connections, which are often relied upon as yielding elements. This paper presents experimental testing and a design approach for a novel buckling-restrained connection that combines a glued-in rod with a buckling-restrained axial fuse to form a ductile and fully concealed connection that is potentially replaceable after an earthquake. The connection has high stiffness when compared to traditional screwed or bolted timber connections and overcomes several challenges in their design, including overstrength and a pinched hysteretic response that limits energy dissipation capacity. Cyclic testing of the proposed connection under a range of design configurations is carried out to evaluate its seismic performance in terms of ductility and energy dissipation capacity and a design procedure is proposed. Results of the study demonstrate that the connections can achieve strengths up to 300 kN, with the potential to scale to much higher loads, and achieves the design strength within 10% of the design prediction, resulting in low overstrength. The tested connections consistently achieved ductility ratios above 10 and exhibit wide hysteresis loops without pinching. Repeated testing of a connection after replacing the axial fuses demonstrates the potential for this connection to be a repairable solution after an earthquake.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".