June 28, 2020

Selecting the right beam repair

Our Technical Director Matt Groves has published an article about Selecting the right beam repair in Listed Heritage magazine July/August 2018 issue.

This article discusses the importance of understanding structural behaviour when making decisions about repairs. To demonstrate this it will consider variances in the scarf joints utilised in the repair of two different timbers of a 16th-century barn in Bedfordshire: the truss tieĀ  and purlin.

In the first instance, it is important to understand the typical forces that arise in beams.

Beams are typically subject to tension, compression, shear, bending and torsion. Torsion is not relevant to the examples given here and will not be considered further. Tension is well understood and relates to a force that tries to pull an object apart. Compression is the opposite of tension and is again well understood. It refers to forces trying to push opposite ends of an object together.

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