Head of the project: Ing. Gocál Jozef, PhD.        

Research team: Ing. Hlinka Richard, PhD., doc. Ing. Odrobiňák Jaroslav, PhD., Ing. Kekeliak Miloš, Ing. Daniel Ľuboš, PhD.     

Duration: January 2014 – December 2016                   

The use of wood as a building material in Slovakia still lags behind the possibilities arising from good material base, especially in the structures of the transport infrastructure. The project intends to contribute to the wider use of modern combined timber-steel bridge systems by clarifying their actual behaviour with emphasis on the real behaviour of timber-steel joints, which are required to behave as rigid joints in the plane perpendicular to the timberThe use of wood as a building material in Slovakia still lags behind the possibilities arising from good material base, especially in the structures of the transport infrastructure. The project intends to contribute to the wider use of modern combined timber-steel bridge systems by clarifying their actual behaviour with emphasis on the real behaviour of timber-steel joints, which are required to behave as rigid joints in the plane perpendicular to the timberelement. For this purpose, experimental measurements will be performed on laboratory models of the joints as well as on the actual bridge structure, both under static and cyclic load. For optimal design of these joints thecomponent method will be applied, so far used mostly in the design of joints of steel structures. The practical outcome of the project should be recommendations for practical and adequate modelling of timber-steel bridgestructures using standard software for structural analysis.