Effect of Openings on Oriented Strand Board Webbed Wood I-Joists

Abstract

Tests conducted on oriented strand board (OSB) webbed wood I-joists with web openings revealed that the typical failure mode was that the OSB fractured from tension zones around an opening, with cracks developing diagonally toward the joist flanges. The joist collapsed when the cracks reached the flanges. Finite-element models were developed using ABAQUS to simulate joist behavior. Material nonlinearity, crack propagation, and joist failure were dealt with by a user-defined subroutine. Good correlation was obtained between the test and the analytical results. The finite-element models were then used to investigate the effect of opening size and location on the behavior of joists. The lower bound and the upper bound of the load bearing capacity of joists with openings were found by finite- element modeling and were empirically expressed by polynomials.