Analysis and modeling of the dowel connection in wood T type joint for optimal performance

Abstract Dowel joint is a commonly used connection method in furniture products, building construction etc. because of its production convenience and low cost. The quantitative effect of dowel dimension, dowel position, loading distance on bending moment capacity was studied in this paper. The results showed that neutral line position keeps almost steady with various dowel spaces for two-pin joint. On the basis of the discovery, an analytic model was constructed to predict bending moment capacity of joint in terms of two different failure patterns: dowel withdrawal and dowel rupture. The theoretical models have shown a good agreement with measured results. Dowel space has positive effect on the bending moment capacity while the impact of loading distance can be neglected. But the top dowel, rather than bottom dowel, plays a critical role in deciding joint moment capacity. Increasing dowel diameter and length, fortifying dowel rupture and withdrawal strength, enlarging dowel space, or moving bottom dowel far away from the bottom edge will promote the joint performance. But it should be noted that ratio of dowel diameter to length equal to two times that of dowel withdrawal strength to dowel tensile strength gives the optimized joint parameters