Regular Article

Modeling the influence of connecting elements in wood products behavior: a numerical multi-scale approach

¹ Université Paris-Est, Laboratoire Modelisation et Simulation Multi Echelle, MSME UMR 8208 CNRS, Champs sur Marne, 77454 Marne-la-Vallée cedex 2, France
² Institut technologique Forêt Cellulose Bois-Construction Ameublement, FCBA, 10 rue Galilée, 77420 Champs sur Marne, France
³ ESIPE, Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée, 5 bd Descartes, Champs sur Marne, 77454 Marne-la-Vallée cedex 2, France

^* e-mail: luc.chevalier@univ-paris-est.fr

Received: 8 August 2017
Accepted: 10 January 2018

Abstract

Wood furniture is often composed of simple parts that may be modeled as beams or plates. These particularities allow using simplified approaches that reduces the number of degrees of freedom (dof for short) in a finite element simulation of the furniture's behavior. Generally, connections are not taken into account in such simulations but these connections are critical in the failure process of the furniture and it worth studying it precisely. Using a multi-scale approach, this paper introduces a numerical procedure to identify the connection contribution in the furniture's stiffness. Comparing 3D finite element calculations with a Timoshenko's beam calculation on a corner of two wooden parts, we identify the specific behavior of the connection elements (pins, nut, screw… and local 3D effects) to introduce it as a punctual 0D element in the beam code. Two validations of the approach are presented here: (i) a numerical validation by comparing the result of the beam code with a complete 3D finite element simulation on a representative plane structure of wooden furniture; (ii) an experimental validation by managing a global bending test and measuring the displacement field using digital image correlation (DIC for short).