Durability of joints made with threaded steel rods glued in chestnut timber - An experimental approach

This paper presents the results of an experimental study developed on joints made with glued-in rods in glued laminated chestnut, with the rods inserted parallel to the grain. Three anchor lengths have been used. The test pieces have been submitted to pull-compression test until failure after three different previous conditionings: preservation in a normalized atmosphere, artificial accelerated weathering cycles, and climate conditioning under uniform service load. The results indicate that the aging cycles lead to drops of stiffness and pull-out strength in the joints with usual anchorage lengths in practice. Therefore, there is not a significant difference in the value of those losses due to the action of the service load during the accelerated weathering cycles.