Glulam – closed form solution using statistical smearing, truncating, calibrating

ABSTRACT This paper describes a relatively simple closed form formula for predicting the strength of glulam assemblies in bending about the major axis based on statistical engineering mechanics using the tension strength of finger jointed of bonded lamination pairs. It has been calibrated against the strengths of full-size glulam beams ranging in depths from 150 mm to 1200 mm over spans of 2.7 m up to 19.5 m. Comparisons are made at both the mean strength and 5th percentile strength levels with the latter drawing attention to the fact that all test series invariably involve observation of minimum values that means the statistical distributions are invariably truncated. For Weibull distributions, this has an impact on the shape factor and, therefore, the local coefficient of variation of the lower tail, which plays an important role in size effects in glulam and potentially has wider implications.