Macro Modeling Technique for Integrally-Attached Timber Plates: Sensitivity Analysis

Using the Integral Mechanical Attachment (IMA) technique, a new macroscopic model has recently been introduced to simulate the structural behavior of segmented timber plates. The macro model is based on employing only beam and spring elements, which aims to reduce the computational time associated with the database generation and analysis runtime. Despite its simplicity, the model provides a reliable modeling approach. In the current paper, the sensitivity of the behavior of the macro model to variations in the geometry of timber plates is investigated. Three types of timber plates with rectangular, parallelogram and irregular geometries are designed and subjected to the sensitivity analysis. The corresponding macro models are subjected to out-of-plane loads. Constructing the corresponding continuum Finite Element (FE) models, the deformation of the macro models is compared to that the FE models. The deformed shape obtained from the macro model was similar to that of the FE model with an approximately 5% error.