TIME-DEPENDENT SERVICE-LOAD BEHAVIOR OF WOOD FLOORS - EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

It is well known that wood exhibits continued additional creep deflect ion under long-term load. Differential creep behavior among joists, sh eathing material, and connection details in a wood joist Boor system c an affect the system performance of the assembly over time. For exampl e, if the flexural stiffness of the partial composite T-sections consi sting of wood joists and sheathing changes continuously over time, the deflection response of the wood assembly would obviously be affected. The objective of this research was to investigate the time-dependent behavior of wood floor systems within the service-load range as define d by time-dependent deflection behavior and time-dependent load-distri bution behavior. The specific focus of this paper is on experimental t ests and observations.