Experimental investigation on full-scale glued oak solid timber beams for structural bearing capacity

• Full-scale oak glued solid timber beams have been manufactured using MUF adhesive.
• Full-scale bending tests on glued solid oak timber beams have been performed.
• Influence of the finger-joint on the performance of glued beams has been highlighted.
• The relative structural performance of glued oak timber has been assessed.

This paper presents an experimental investigation on full-scale glued solid timer beams made of oak timber, for structural purposes. Similar experimental work was previously presented by the authors using beech timber (Tran et al., 2012). Here, the results from the previous work were served for comparison purpose between the performances of the two hardwood species (oak and beech). The obtained results showed that the glued solid timber beams made of oak timber perform relatively more much better than their counterparts made of beech timber, which was explained by the weakness in the finger-joint due to a poor adhesion within the beech timber.

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