Flexural behavior of a braced hybrid steel-timber beam

A hybrid steel-timber beam commercially available in Australia is subject to a flexural test to study its mechanical performance. To mimic the practical use of the beam as a floor joist and reproduce the lateral restraints offered by the flooring, two beams were connected to each other using lateral bracing. The braced beam system was tested in four-point bending. The beams not only achieved their full loading capacity, but they also displayed excellent ductility, which could make them suitable for use in seismic prone areas. A finite element analysis of the tests is carried out to understand the performance of the beam and to validate the model so it can be used to carry virtual tests on different configurations of hybrid beams. The study revealed that if a hybrid steel beam is to display ductility, the steel web must be thin to fail first before the cracking of the timber.