Briefing: Dowel fasteners: a simple design method

The solution to the problem of designing dowel fasteners, such as nails, bolts or lag screws, in wooden shear connections depends upon relating the embedment length of the dowel to the compression stress on the wood and the bending strength of the dowel. This paper presents a simple means of doing this. Two equations are presented; these contain only yield stress of the dowel, compression stress on the wood and diameter of the dowel, together with coefficients depending upon joint configuration. The characteristics used are taken from the North American literature.