Gang-Nail Construction: A rational way of fabricating roof trusses for urban and rural housing

Abstract

The application of punched metal plates in timber construction is a new development, which has gone a long way to rationalise the fabrication of joints in timber engineering. What has hitherto been produced with a lot of labour and time consuming hammering can now be easily and quickly produced by using a punched metal plate with the help of a simple hydraulic press. The joint remains tightly fixed years on end. Furthermore the cost advantages are enormous. One of the most popular punched metal plate is the GANG-NAIL, the structural aspects of which, and the general principles of design and calculation of truss-plated joints are outlined in this paper.