Relationships between stiffness of material, lamellas and CLT elements with respect to out of plane bending and rolling shear

Abstract The use of cross laminated timber (CLT) for construction has increased greatly in recent years and the large volumes of wood used for CLT means that it is important to optimize the use of the material. This requires relevant grading of lamellas and knowledge of relationships between lamella and CLT properties. In the present study the relationship between dynamic axial modulus of elasticity (MoE) of lamellas and the quasi-static out of plane bending stiffness of CLT is investigated. By means of four-point bending test it is shown that the effective quasi-static MoE of lamellas in CLT is only 2­–6 % lower than the average axial dynamic MoE of the individual lamellas. With this knowledge, producers of CLT can easily predict and control the important out of plane bending stiffness of the produced CLT. Moreover, it is shown that effective rolling shear stiffness of layers in CLT can be accurately determined by means of digital image correlation performed in connection to four-point bending of CLT, even for long test spans. For layers of lamellas of Scots pine of size 40 × 190 mm 2 the average apparent or effective rolling shear modulus was determined to 159 MPa. The average rolling shear modulus of the same material was determined to 56 MPa.