Stiffness of Framing Members with Partial Composite Action

Abstract

A simple procedure is presented for computing the composite stiffness of a wood bending member with sheathing attached nonrigidly to one or both edges. To account for interlayer slip, it is only necessary to modify the axial stiffnesses of the flanges and then compute the stiffness of the resulting T‐beam or I‐beam by the “transformed area” procedure. Test data agreed very closely with theoretical predictions. The method also provides reasonable estimates of interlayer slip. The procedure can be carried out on a hand‐held calculator and is therefore in a form which can be accepted by code writers and easily implemented by designers.