Abstract
Materials such as timber, concrete, rock and soil exhibit a strain softening behavior after reaching a peak stress in compression tests. The present paper is concerned with deflections of elastic-plastic strain softening timber beams. The theoretical method for calculating the deflections due to bending and shear is developed, using the virtual work principle for beams. For Japanese cedar, the simplified bi-linear σ-ε relationship with a linear falling branch is used, according to compression and tension tests. The shearing stresses of timber beams in the elastic-plastic range are also presented. The numerical solutions obtained from the presented virtual work principle are compared with the test results, and the accuracy and the efficiency of this method may be verified.
