Semi-Rigid Moment-Resisting Behavior of Multiple Tab-and-Slot Joint for Freeform Timber Plate Structures

Historically based on the transfer of ancestral know-how, the art of carpentry changed considerably at the beginning of the 21st century with the arrival on the market of engineered wood products (EWP) and computer numerically controlled machines (CNC). The development of these wood products was initially started for the needs of aeronautics : lightweight panels but with high structural capacity. It is also in this field that automated multi-axis milling machines and the accompanying computing tool, computer-aided design and manufacturing (CAD / CAM), have begun to be developed to produce more complex mechanical parts. It was also in the early 2000s that several teams of researchers in the field of computer graphics but also in architecture were interested in complex free forms. One of the many challenges is still the discretization with planar elements of doubly curved surfaces oriented freely in space. The encounter of these `` algorithms '' with the high-performant wood panels was ineluctable. However, the assembly of polygonal panels in space to form a structure is not trivial. Optimization efforts are made so that the topology in itself favors the distribution of forces to tend towards a behavior of shells. But the problem is sometimes insoluble for very irregular shapes alternating negative, zero and positive Gaussian curvatures. To ensure the transmission of the axial, shear and bending internal forces induced by vertical or horizontal external loads, whether symmetrical or not, the performance of the assemblies used to connect these panels by their edges becomes paramount. In wood construction, this is a topic currently being studied by a few research laboratories including EPFL for innovative wood-to-wood joints with multiple tab and slots (MTSJ). The main difficulty lies in how to connect thin wood panels with the best stiffness and strength. In the recent past, the assembly of wood parts between them, often with metal fasteners to provide a certain ductility, was assimilated to a hinge. With the new standards like the Eurocodes, the notion of semi-rigidity is now essential to obtain a realistic response of structures to both ultimate and service limit states. The solution proposed at IBOIS enters into this new context. It allows, without glue or metallic connectors, to interconnect thin engineered wood panels, ensuring both locator and connector features and the transfer of multidirectional forces. This thesis focuses on the semi-rigid moment resisting behavior of the through tenon variant (TT) with closed slots. The numerous experiments conducted during this study demonstrated the ability of this variant to compete with screws to resist a moment around the angularly connected edges. The joint is directly generated during the multiaxial cutting of laminated veneer lumber(LVL) panels which include a certain percentage of cross-layers. From a structural point of view, the local mechanical study under a bending moment was inspired by a wood-to-wood joint in service in the ancestral Japanese shrines, the "Nuki" joint. Analyzed by Japanese researchers as it historically participates in the resilience of their ancestral constructions to typhoons and earthquakes, it activates embedment mechanisms of wood in rotational partial compression (RPC) to resist the moment resulting from the external loads. It is these mechanisms that are taken into account for through tenon variant. ...