Reliability-based Analysis Of Composite Solid Slender Timber Columns With Aluminium Laminates Using Selected Nigerian Timber Species

Four timber species (Strombosia pustulata, Macrocarpa biquertii, Entandrophragmacylindricum and Nauclea diderichii) were laminated with aluminium sheets of varyingthicknesses.Axial and flexural loads were applied to the composite columns to determinetheir behaviour under such loadings. Finite element analysis was carried out in Abaqus/CAE6.10 (2010) and the reliability analysis was carried out using the First Order ReliabilityAnalysis (FORM) in MATLAB (2007) on the laminated timber columns. The results forfinite element analysis show the effect of the thickness of Aluminium laminates on thestrength capacity of timber columns whereby deflection reduced from 3.28×10-2mm fortimber column without laminate to 2.96×10-2mm with the introduction of 20mm aluminiumlaminate in the x-axis. Similarly, the deflection reduced from 5.18×10-2mm to 1.18×10-2mmin the y-axis, and 5.45mm to 1.093mm in the z-axis for the timber (Strombosia pustulataspecie) column that is fixed-free end restraint condition. For the reliability analysis, bending,buckling and flexural buckling failure modes were considered. The results for compressionmode of failure show that the column is safewith safety index values of 4.3 and 9.68 for loadparameters and dead-to-live load parameters respectively without laminates. The studyshows that the most critical failure mode for the column is flexural buckling and hence isnotsafe for imposed loads that are greater than 20kN but made safe with the use of aluminiumlaminate of 8mm.

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