Compressive behavior of Australian radiata pine laminated veneer lumber

Laminated veneer lumber (LVL) is a popular engineering wood commonly used in modern wood structures. Australian radiata pine, being one of the prominent fast-growing woods in Australia, exhibits substantial promise for advancement and application in structural LVL. To assess the feasibility of employing Australian radiata pine LVL (RP-LVL) in compression components like columns and walls, the compressive behavior of RP-LVL was experimentally studied. The modulus of elasticity and compressive strength of RP-LVL under different loading directions were determined. Besides, obvious cross-section influences on the compressive failure modes and compressive strength parallel to grain of RP-LVL were found. Variations in compressive failure modes were observed to correspond with distinct cross-sectional sizes in RP-LVL. Both the section depth effect parameter and section width effect parameter of RP-LVL were obtained for further strength analysis of RP-LVL compression components. Taking into account of the cross-section influences, a predictive model for the compressive strength parallel to the grain of RP-LVL was proposed. An excellent correlation between the test results and the predicted results were found, affirming the effectiveness of the proposed predictive method in accurately estimating the compressive strength parallel to the grain of RP-LVL. The results underscored that RP-LVL possessed competitive compressive properties could be provided a great potential for application in civil engineering as compression components.