Performance of timber girders with end-notch: Experimental and numerical investigation

Abstract

Many bridges built during the colonial times in Australia have timber girders as load transferring elements and they are still in service with increased traffic loads and consistent deterioration. Most of the timber girders in those bridges are notched at the ends for better seating arrangement. Therefore, it is necessary to quantify the strength characteristics of notched girders in order to ensure structural safety and make necessary intervention to extend their service lives. Hence experimental tests were conducted on the notched rectangular timber girder samples with three different notch depths (i.e.10%, 15% and 30% of the depth of beam) having the notched angle of 1:4. Consequently, de..