A comparative study of the analysis model for timber structures: Addressing nonlinearities and connection behaviour

Timber has been studied as a material of construction from many perspectives, including strength and durability. Despite many studies showing a good correlation between material models, connection behaviour, and structural modelling, it is still not clear which approach is suitable under what constraints. This study was performed to clarify the problem. The basis for the analysis of timber structures is emphasized in this work in terms of problem dimension, material constitution, and geometrical nonlinearities. The modelling and the idealisation methods of structures are categorised into five different groups and briefly explained. An experiment available in the literature is used as a reference to illustrate modelling capabilities of different techniques, and models from five different groups is used to perform analysis. By comparing the analysis results and the experiment, key notes on the analysis proficiency are highlighted, including failure load, maximum displacement, and failure mode. The results show that most of the errors occurred in the displacements. Furthermore, the divergence between test and analysis results are investigated, and an approximate method for calculating actual displacements is proposed.