Experimental study on bending performance of two layers glued build-up member made of cedar

Glued build-up members (GBMs) are structural building members that are developed as an application to effectively utilize Japanese domestic box-heart timber. The purpose of this study is to establish a method to evaluate the bending performance of a GBM. In this study, we describe the results of a full-scale bending test of the GBM specimen to characterize its bending performance. Further, a structural model to evaluate the experimental results has been proposed and validated. The results exhibit that the evaluation that considers a GBM as a uniform elastic body is almost as effective as the simple method. In addition, the results obtained on the GBM cross-section model, which accounts for the differences between the elastic bending moduli of different pieces of the timber, are compared with those obtained using the uniform member cross-section model. The data reveal that the experimental results can be evaluated more accurately using the proposed GBM cross-section model than with the uniform member cross-section model.