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This paper presents a methodology to characterize the secant shearing stiffness of welding-through wood dowels used in multi-layer spruce beams. Weldingthrough wood dowel's stiffness behaviour as well as isostatic multi-layer beams' behaviour were investigated experimentally. These elements are made by a specifically designed machine to guarantee repeatability. A model of finite elements was developed to reproduce the bending behaviour of the beams tested from non-linear connection behaviour. This model is then used to study the influence of parameters such as: layer number, spacing of dowels, load type (concentrated or distributed), strength class and beam span. After a sensibility analysis, a parameterized regression model allows to obtain k ser and k u fastener secant stiffness in compliance with EN 1995-1 standard to design multi-layer beams in an elastic analytical model way. This model is based on the work by Kreuzinger (1999).

High-speed dowel rotation welding was used to fabricate a full-scale suspended floor, an applicable civil-engineering structure, to demonstrate that scaling up of such welding technique was feasible. This was coupled with obtaining a more light-weight floor assembly with equal stiffness by maximizing the rigidity of the suspended floor while minimizing the number of timber planks used to build it, and maintaining its vibration frequency high and its level of vibration low. Several assembly and connection combinations of two and three slats linked through welded wood dowels were tried to determine the mechanical resistance of the cross-over joints that had to be used in the building of the floor. Deformation under 4-point static load of the floor was carried out to determine displacement under load and the floor vibration behaviour was determined by the use of accelerometers. The fundamental first natural frequency measured does satisfy well the requirements specified by Eurocode 5.