Knee Brace: Wednesday’s Word Of The Week
A “knee brace” is a diagonal member that connects a beam and column near their joint.
Structurally, this could potentially serve various purposes:
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act as a strut for the beam, shortening its effective span or supporting a cantilever
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act as a brace for the column, shortening it’s unbraced length
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create rigidity in the beam to column joint to act as a moment connection
In practice, knee braces are often used simply for aesthetic purposes. When included in analysis, they can have a significant effect on load path and unwanted impacts on attached members – so decorative knee braces are usually detailed with slip connections, and structural knee braces often have substantial connections.
*Each Wednesday our structural engineer, Rik Vandermeulen, discusses a new term associated with glulam manufacturing. He will do this until we run out of words. If there is a timber or glulam term that you have heard of and want to know more about, let us know in the comments.