Evaluating Wood Structures

[JeffW2026]

Afternoon Everyone,

I have another challenging project! This is an outdoor cabana, where the deck, footing and columns are made with steel reinforced concrete, with a roof made with wood beams, rafters and basically plywood sheets on top. The wood beams and rafters are connected using sheet metal steel hardware and fasteners. I have not (yet) modeled the fasteners, preferring to back the forces out using normal stresses for now. Loading is gravity and wind (pressure) equivalent to 150 MPH. Does anyone have any experience evaluating wood structures? The allowable stresses in bending, shear, tension and compression are all vastly different. Any ideas? @John_Holtz can you help with this one too?

Thanks in advance,

Jeff

[John_Holtz]

Hi @JeffW2026 

Since the design is based on sheet metal hangers and fasteners, I assume the wood parts in the model are separate. In other words, you did not merge the wood parts together to form one big solid.

If the parts are separate, you are using contact to bond them together. You can use the contact force to get the loads on the hanger and fasteners. Right-click the contact in the Model Tree and choose "Reactions". This will give the X, Y, Z forces. Tips 48 and 49 in the PDF document attached to my forum post Suggested Reading - Tips and Tricks are for the constraint reactions. The contact reactions dialog behaves the same way.

John