Torsional Behavior of a Wood-based Composite Beam

Currently, wood has been undergoing a renewal process in the form of wood-based composite materials. Kerto® (FinnForest), one such wood-based composite material, is a laminated veneer lumber (LVL) obtained by unwinding spruce trees. To obtain the balanced moduli in torsion hGJi of such materials, two finite element method (FEM) Fortran approaches (in displacement and stress) have been proposed for these laminate composites, under the Saint Venant assumption. In addition to the hGJi, the torsion center position and highly precise solution fields in displacement and stress are obtained. Moreover, the performance of the proposed methods make it possible to take into account the effect of adhesive film. In order to validate both the approaches, we finally compare their results with the experimental values obtained from the torsion tests on specimens taken directly from the Kerto® panels, and with ANSYS modeling of the whole beam.