Abstract
We made timber portal frames composed of compressed LVL beam-to-column joints and steel column-to-base joints. The former used compressed LVL plates and compressed LVL pins and the latter used steel plates and compressed LVL pins/steel pins (B1/B2 type). In the moment applying test, the compressed LVL beam-to-column joints showed little initial-slip and good ductility, but the steel column-to-base joint showed large initial-slip and poor ductility. In the racking tests of timber portal frames, the moment was distributed to each joint by the ratio of the rotational rigidity, and the beam-to-column joints yielded first, followed by yielding of the column-to-base joints. The maximum resistance of the timber portal frame was decided by the resistance of the column-to-base joints, and also the failure mode was decided by the characteristic failure of the column-to-base joints. The allowable shear strength of B1 and B2 type timber portal frames was 8.0 kN and 11.9 kN respectively. The height of the inflection point of the timber portal frame calculated by Inayama's formula showed significant correlation with the experimental values calculated by the distribution of the degree of strain, and the resistance and the deformation could be predicted by this formula.
