Recommendations for Designing Wooden Arches on Metal-toothed Plates

This paper presents the findings of the pilot studies and recommendations for designing of two-hinged wooden arches. The prototype models of wooden arches with the span of 6mand the rise of 1m were designed. The models had a rectangular cross-section of 180x40mm and a T-section of 180x40mm with a plywood plate with the thickness of 6 mm and the width of 500mm. The main objective of the T-section was to ensure the stability of the arch. Each arch was composed of six segments –boards joined by clamping plates. The bowstring truss including two inclined tie bars enables carrying asymmetric loads and provides in-plane stability of the arch. A methodology for laboratory testing of the prototype models of wooden arches subjected to different types of loads was developed. Two prototypes of wooden arches were tested with rectangular cross-sections and two T-section ones subjected to the loading across the span, and two prototypes subjected to the half-span loading. In total, eight arches were tested. Deflections of arches, cross-section deformations and arch thrust force were recorded. The arches were tested until failure. The results of testing revealed insufficient stability of the arches with rectangular cross-section in the horizontal plane. For the arches with T-section the whole arch rib was damaged, the in-plane stability was ensured by the T-section. The collapsing force of the T-section arch was about 1.3 times greater than the collapsing force of the rectangular section arches.