Performance of Wood Dowels and Same Size Metallic Connectors Used for Furniture Joints

Abstract

For a circular and sustainable economy, the reuse of wood furniture parts has gathered increasing importance. Disassemblable joints and purposefully developed elements may support this reuse. Despite the relatively high number of structural connectors, newly developed fittings have appeared on the market, combining the advantages of the previous ones or introducing new solutions, like the Domino dowels and connectors developed to make strong hidden joints. In furniture manufacturing, both panel and frame elements are joined for load-bearing, semi-load-bearing, or non-load-bearing connections. Metallic Domino connectors have recently been developed and recommended by the manufacturer only as connecting elements, and not as supporting elements of furniture constructions. In daily practice, the general consideration exists that these metallic connectors are strong enough to perform well as load-bearing elements. The main goal of this research was to examine the strength of corner (L) and T joints made with upper wood dowels and metallic connectors, to compare their performance. For the experiments, same-sized wood dowels and metallic connectors were used. The tension and compression test results indicate that the type of joint (corner versus T) is a stronger influencing factor of performance than the type of jointing element (wood dowel vs. metallic connector). Domino dowels are manufactured in different sizes. Further research will focus on finding the wood dowel equivalent to a given metallic connector of different sizes.