Experimental Investigation on Bending Behavior of Innovative Poplar LVL Floor Diaphragms

Poplar laminated veneer lumber (poplar LVL) is made of fast-growing poplar veneer and structural adhesive, which owns the advantages of sustainability and stable quality. Here an innovative poplar LVL floor diaphragm is presented, mainly made up of orthogonal rib beams fitted together using L-shape steel connectors. The paper mainly deals with an experimental study on the bending behavior of the floor under transverse uniform load. Full-scale testing on eight 3.6 m × 4.8 m specimens shows that the damage phenomena of the floor mainly exhibited as the separation between the rib beams and pulling out from the rib beam for the tapping screw. Though some local damage phenomena appeared before the preset maximum loading level, the load-deflection curves basically kept linear for most of the specimens. Under the service load level of 2.5 kN/m2, the distribution of deflection and strain for the full-length rib beam substantially exhibited the characteristic of a two-way slab. In contrast, for the segmented rib beam, the situation was much more complex. Due to the parametric design of the specimens, testing results illustrated that the rib beam height played the most important role in floor stiffness. Next was the sheathing panel, while the role of segmented rib beam spacing was relatively unremarkable. At last, a revised pseudo-plate method was proposed to evaluate the maximum deflection of the novel floor, which considered the composite action by rigidity factors.