Engineered wood beams with curved corrugated core: Experimental verification of design methodology

This study presents a comprehensive design and structural performance evaluation of novel engineered wood beams incorporating curved corrugated panels. To gain a deeper understanding of the assembly of corrugated panels, the direction of the corrugation axis, and the orientations of wood fibers, two configurations, namely concave and convex, were simulated using the Abaqus finite element (FE) software. A geometric parametric study was also conducted using the FE model to reveal the influence of corrugation geometry on the bending stiffness (BS) of the engineered wood beams. Based on the FE results and considering several parameter combinations, a unit cell geometry for the curved corrugated panel was designed, and the core configuration and fiber orientation were specified. Curved corrugated panels were manufactured from southern yellow pine strands bonded with phenol-formaldehyde (PF) adhesive and formed using an aluminum matched-die mold. Engineered beams with both concave and convex core configurations were assembled and subsequently subjected to compression and four-point bending tests to evaluate their structural performance and validate finite element model (FEM) predictions. Experimental validation showed close agreement with the FE simulations. The convex configuration exhibited bending stiffness values up to 3.3% higher than the FEM predictions, whereas the concave configuration showed values up to 7.7% lower. The convex configuration demonstrated improved mechanical performance in bending, whereas the concave configuration showed better compressive strength. Both configurations surpassed the specific bending stiffness of glulam under the linear region, demonstrating their potential as stiffness-to-weight alternatives for structural applications using curved corrugated panels.