Comparison of different failure approaches in knotty wood

This article presents and assesses 64 different ways for predicting the failure onset in knotty wooden beams. The aim is to provide engineers and modellers a generalview of how to evaluate the failure in wooden structural members with knots.The studied criteria included both the conventional point-based and average stress theories. Special attention was paid to the effect of the elements of the woodmesostructure, i.e. knots and fiber deviation, which can generate singular stress concentrations as notches or cracks would do in fracture mechanics. The case study consisted of predicting the failure onset of bending in structural wooden beams.A previously validated finite element model was used in order to compute the heterogeneous stresses. It was found that the knots caused considerable stress singularities so that the size of the average stress theory influenced the failure predictions by up to 23%. However, the variations generated by distinct phenomenologicalcriteria were in general much smaller. The application of the average stress theory in large stress integration volumes is strongly recommended when predicting the failure in wood members.