Hi Tim,
The members only area of the TFG website contains the results of research work done on this topic and this can be freely downloaded by members.
Work has been done at various Universities to try and establish the behaviour of joints (Bath & Southampton, England, Strathclyde, Scotland and Laramie, Wyoming, USA) but even these research results will be subject to their use limitations.
I do not know which programme you are using but I am sure that this will allow you to at least establish two extreme cases i.e. employing all moment connections (fixed) and pin connections (free to rotate). A solution which might more closely reflect the real life situation might logically and probably therefore lie somewhere between these two extremes and applying some reasoned judgement for key joints will allow you to get closer to an optimum understanding of your frame behavioir as permitted by your programme.
I will now be rather controversial and state that in general detail joint design is not really required when a frame is properly designed and conforms to well established practice. If the performance of an individual joint becomes so critical to the performance of the frame then the frame design must be suspect. Check your frame by sytematically removing timbers one at a time to establish the effect of the loss of that timber. If this provides extreme results which seem to point towards frame failure or disproportionate collapse then you probably need to think about the overall design again. When you have optimised the frame design only then look more closley at joint performance.
Where walls are largely comprised of plate glass or windows in frames then deflection and deformation is likely to be important since large movements might potentially overload a window pane and cause a fracture if too much movement is permitted.
Timber frame design can be a bit judgemental and is largely based on the experience, knowledge and understanding of the frame designer and of course most importantly historic precedent. I don't believe that this subject can be taught in a week or even in a year since the peripheral knowledge required to be absorbed in order to able to make reasoned judgements is largely experience based and gaining experience is itself somewhat opportunistic i.e. It takes time.
Regards
Ken Hume P.Eng.
