Hi Pegs,
That's a good question and one to which The Guild has addressed itself over the years as part of its sponsored research programmes. If you go to the "members only" area you can download various reports that give some idea of how joints, frames and sheathed structures perform but even this will not completely answer your question satisfactorily.
It is quite possible today if one is equipped with a good 3D structural modelling programme to approximate the behavior of a composite structure and obtain an indication of how it might behave under certain loading conditions. These programmes do not tend to be as easy to use as Sketchup and come with quite a high price tag and it really it is a pre requisite to have had some education in structural mechanics.
It would be important to try at least to understand the implications of your actions since buildings will hopefully stand for a long while and structural outcomes calculated today might no longer hold true in several hundred years time when a building has yielded, pieces have been removed, load path distribution changed, etc., so there is really no absolute answer to your question.
Regards
Ken Hume M.Sc.
Last edited by Ken Hume; 07/10/07 07:10 AM.
