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Material characteristics

The material can be selected from predefined database or specified manually by the user. the database contains basic strength classes for softwood and hardwood according to EN 338, strength classes for glued laminated timber and also local timber grades in accordance with EN 1912. These characteristics are necessary for the analysis:

The verification of the fire resistance is performed using lower material reliability than the verification for common temperature. The reason is, that the fire exposure is considered as an accidental situation and only requirement is the bearing capacity during the escape of persons. Therefore 20% quantile is used instead of 5% quantile for common design situations. The 20% quantile properties are calculated as characteristic ones multiplied by the factor k_fi that is greater than 1.

The design values of material characteristics are used during the analysis. The design values are calculated by multiplication of characteristic values by modification factor k_mod,fi and division by partial factor for material properties γ_M,fi. Index of design values starts with d. Modification factor for duration of load and moisture content k_mod,fi depends on the design procedure.

The strength parameters in tension and bending can be increased for small cross-sections in accordance with chapter 3.2 of EN 1995-1-1. Depth factor k_h according to the formula (3.1) is used for this increase.