Performance comparison of wood furniture joints fastened with Domino tenons and connectors

Abstract

Structural joints play a critical role in maintaining the integrity of furniture pieces during their whole life cycle. Several wood joint types and joint fasteners are available for wood furniture manufacturing aimed to simplify the production, to decrease the assembly time and to increase the strength, stability and lifetime of the finished products. Despite the relatively high number of structural connectors, more and more newly developed fittings appear in the market combining the advantages of the previous ones or introducing new solutions for the same problems. Just like the Domino joints - first introduced in the market in mid-2000`s – which combine the benefits of a conventional dowel and a tenon and mortise joint. The main goal of this research was to examine the strength and elastic properties of T- and L- type (corner) wood joints made with wood Domino dowels and plastic combined metallic Domino connectors, in order to compare the performance of the two fastener types. The results indicate that both T-joints and L corner joints made with wood Domino dowels have higher resistance than the joints made with plastic combined metallic Domino connections.