Experimental testing of plywood & OSB ‘jigsaw’ joints for structural characteristics

Summary

The aim of this project is to investigate the strength characteristics of the ‘jigsaw’ joint used in the design of the WikiHouse building system. Through analysis of the results obtained through monotonic tensile testing, it was found that the jigsaw joints failed at an average maximum force of 9.28 kN and 10.29 kN for plywood and OSB respectively. The overall stiffness of the joints were 1.2 kN/mm and 2.05 kN/mm for plywood and OSB joints respectively. Additionally, rotational deformation was observed for both material types, highlighted using Digital Image Correlation (DIC). The failure mode for the plywood specimens was ductile delamination of the veneers at the joint interface, whilst the OSB specimens demonstrated more brittle behavior, with crack failures occurring at the areas of highest displacement.

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Experimental data