PSI - Issue 78

Giacomo Iovane et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 78 (2026) 521–527

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applications in seismic resistant structures with the aim of energy dissipation through plastic deformation in the steel link, preserving the elastic response of both the connections and the timber elements. Type 5 joint consists of post-tensioned cables crossing the beam along the length and the column to which they are anchored at the external side, moreover mechanical dissipators are added (Rahmzadeh and Iqbal, 2021). Type 1 Type 2 Type 3 Type 4 Type 5

Sun et al. 2024

Wang et al. 2021 Kang et al. 2022

Iovane et al. 2023b

Rahmzadeh and Iqbal 2021

Fig. 2. Example of beam-to-column joints for each type, from literature.

3. Joints classification by stiffness For the study joints, the classification method presented in Iovane et al. (2023a) is applied. On the bases of the Moment-rotation (M- θ) experimental curves from literature , the dimensionless m̅ - θ̅ curves are obtained (Fig. 3), according to the following equations (eq. 1, 2): m̅= M j,Rd M b,el (1) θ̅=θ j,Rd E T ·I b L b ·M b,el (2) where M j,Rd and M b,el are the design elastic bending strengths of the joint and of the connected beam, respectively, θ j,Rd is the joint rotation corresponding to M j,Rd , E T is the timber elastic modulus, I b is the beam section moment of inertia and L b is the beam span.

Fig. 3. Classification by stiffness of study joints. Then, the dimensionless rotational stiffness ( k̅ ) is calculated as the ratio between m̅ and θ̅ . Min and max values for each type are given in Table 1, with the related literature reference, also evidencing the lowest and the largest values among all the case studies. Among a total of 106 joints examined, 39% (41 joints) are semi-rigid, 61% (65 joints) are pinned while no joint is classified as rigid. Among Type 1, all 58 joints are classified as pinned joints, with a dimensionless rotational stiffness ranging between k̅ =0.0009, provided by a 1.2 configuration joint, where a T-shaped aluminum plate is used and connected through dowels to the beam, through screws to the column (Masaeli et al., 2020), and k̅ =0.578, provided by a 1.1