Predicting Behavior of Grouted Dowel Connections Using Interfacial Cohesive Elements

Experiments on dowel-type timber connections

Dowel-type connections are commonly used in timber engineering for a large range of structural applications. The current generation of design rules is largely based on empiricism and testing and lacks in many parts a stringent mechanical foundation. This often blocks an optimized use of the connections, which is essential for the design of economically efficient structures. Moreover, it severel...

Load-carrying behaviour of steel-to-timber dowel connections

This paper details tests on steel-wood-steel connections with thin dowels carried out at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Connections configurations were selected in such a way that the influence of the main parameters such as dowel slenderness ratio, dowel strength, fastener spacing and end distance and the number of dowels could be studied. An important issue of the pa...

Integrative research for an enhanced design of dowel connections

Parallel Simulations of Dynamic Fracture Using Extrinsic Cohesive Elements

In this paper, we present a novel parallel implementation of extrinsic initially rigid cohesive elements in an explicit finite element solver designed for the simulation of dynamic fracture events. The implementation is based on activating instead of inserting the cohesive elements and uses ParFUM, a parallel framework specifically developed for simulations involving unstructured meshes. Aspect...

Effect of mineral-collagen interfacial behavior on the microdamage progression in bone using a probabilistic cohesive finite element model.

The interactions between mineral and collagen phases in the ultrastructural level play an important role in determining the mechanical properties of bone tissue. Three types of mineral-collagen interaction (i.e., ionic interactions, hydrogen/van der Waals bonds, and van der Waals/viscous shear in opening/sliding mode, respectively) have been simulated in this study, using cohesive zone-modeling...