The use of timber as structural member have come under serious review and study recently as good quality logs are alarmingly becoming scarce besides the chronic problems of traditional sawn timber. Many researches regarding the use of timber are needed to strengthen or repair old timber structures as well as to improve the mechanical properties of new timber structures. Connection is one of the important parts in wood-based products. It can help the structure to increase their strength performance. A detailed and proper connection must be designed properly in order to make sure that the structure can transfer design loads to and from a structural glulam without causing localized stress concentrations that can cause any failure at the joint. This paper reviewed about the performance of glulam with connection, glulam as a replacement of solid timber since it have been proved by some researchers that it give better strength compared to solid timber and the best connection type that can be used to strengthen the structural glulam member.

Over recent years, half-lap connection is widely used all over the world to provide longer structural member due to limited size of sawn timber in construction industries. Timber connected in joints may reduce overall mechanical properties of the structure. This paper present finding on a series of connection of half lap bolted joint member from Keruing (SG5) and Sesendok (SG7) timber species. The half-lap connection were subjected to tensile test and reinforced with GFRP sheet that were conducted until failure to determine their tensile behavior. The results showed that the GFRP help to increase the load carrying capacity of all the timber specimens especially timber species that lies in a weak strength group for almost 30 % by strength.

Natural fibre has high potential to be used as reinforcement due to more save, greener and environmentally friendly compared to synthetic fibre. In this research, kenaf core fibre (KCF)-graphene nanoplatelets (GNP) reinforced polypropylene (PP) composites were melt blending using Brabender internal mixer and fabricated by compression moulding. This research aims to fabricate and study the effect of different amounts of MAPP on the mechanical properties of the PP/KCF/GNP composites. The difference amount of maleic anhydride grafted polypropylene (MAPP) as a compatibilizer in hybrid composite was added to enhance the mechanical properties by improving the interfacial adhesion of matrix and KCF. The pure polypropylene (PP) matrix was used as a control. The mechanical properties (tensile and flexural test) were determined using Universal Testing Machine (UTM). Overall, the results show that the presence of MAPP compatibilizer successfully enhanced the mechanical properties as a result of improvement of the fibre-matrix adhesion between the KCF and PP matrix.