In this study, an experimental study was conducted on the nailed timber-plywood-timber joints extended from the standard wall-floor joints of wooden light frame constructions, where the bottom plates of shear walls are nailed to the floors consisting of joists and floor sheathings nailed to them. The principal conclusions are as follows: The allowable lateral resistance of the nailed timber-plywood-timber joints can roundly be estimated by neglecting the plywood panels if their densities are higher than those of the timber main-members and they are fastened effectively onto the timber main-members. The stiffness of the timber-plywood-timber joints is less than that of the control timber-timber joints, which is improved by increasing the number of nails used to fasten the plywood panels onto the timber main-members. The stiffness of the joints whose floor sheathings are glued onto the joists is equivalent to the control timber-timber joints. The timber-plywood-timber joints with appropriate specifications have greater energy capacity until the failure than that of the control timber-timber joints. This ensures their energy capacity, which is important in dynamic resistance, to be equivalent to the control timber-timber joints.

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An experimental study on combined steel-to-timber joints with nails and bolts is conducted in this study. Principal results are as follows: The initial stiffness and effective allowable resistance of combined joints depend obviously on clearances in predrilled bolt-holes. The combined joints with nails and bolts have high potential of energy capacity to resist strong earthquake forces. There are upper limits of clearances in predrilled bolt-holes that allow advantages of considering the synthetic resistance of combined joints in practical structural design. Combining the joint components with appropriate design will give higher performance against strong earthquakes increasing the safety margin and energy capacity until the failure. The combined joints should be designed under the restrictions of particular specifications in closed design systems because the advantages of combining the joint components are influenced obviously by various actual conditions, which is too difficult to consider in detail in open design systems