Category: Testing/R&D

Simpson Strong-Tie is constantly testing and innovating.

Good Ideas Come from Many Places — “Necessity Is the Mother of Invention”

You never know where the next great product idea or innovation is going to come from — some of our best new ideas originate with the customers who use our current products. At Simpson Strong-Tie, we welcome any inspiration that can help us serve our customers’ needs even better. With so much competition, however, and because so much research and testing are entailed in developing each new product, the criteria that an idea must meet to gain eventual acceptance are necessarily quite rigorous. In this post, Steve Rotzin, Manager of Intellectual Property and Legal Services at Simpson Strong-Tie, outlines some of these criteria for your consideration.

All of us, at one time or another, dream up a product idea of some sort. My wife was once sanding the tongue-and-groove boards of our living room ceiling and she thought of a very cool idea of gloves that had Velcro on them and users could interchange sandpaper of various grit on any finger of the glove. If you’ve ever sanded anything, this actually made a lot of sense especially for complex shapes and tough to reach spots. I researched it and found out that someone had already thought of it and “patented it.”
Continue Reading

Designing Resilience: NEESWood Capstone a Decade Later

In 2009, Simpson Strong-Tie participated in an unprecedented research event to highlight the importance of earthquake-resistant wood construction.

The event, the world’s largest earthquake test, was a collaborative Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation project. It teamed academics, engineers, and industry researchers from around the world to subject a structure to what engineers refer to as the “maximum considered event” (MCE), a large, rare earthquake projected to occur, on average, approximately every 2500 years.
Continue Reading

SDWS Timber Screw – The Evolution Continues

Simpson Strong-Tie® R&D engineers are always looking to make products even better and more cost effective, in ways that will improve life not only for homeowners, but also for Designers and builders. In the following post, Aram Khachadourian explains how the newly designed SawTooth™ point on our code-listed Strong-Drive® SDWS Timber screw makes driving faster and easier with no predrilling. The flat head also makes connector and sheathing placement a lot smoother.
Continue Reading

Epoxy vs. Acrylic Adhesive Systems: Which Is Right for Me?

Not all anchoring adhesives are created equal. There are important differences between acrylic-based and epoxy-based adhesive systems — differences that affect installation, gel and cure times, and anchoring performance. In the following post, Marlou Rodriguez, S.E., of Simpson Strong-Tie, lays out some of the comparative installation advantages of each system.

There are two common types of adhesives for anchoring threaded rod or rebar into concrete — epoxy-based systems and acrylic-based systems. What’s the difference? When should you specify one rather than the other? This blog post will help you understand the differences and guide you in choosing the best adhesive for your anchoring solution.
Continue Reading

Drive a New Path: Resisting Uplift with Structural Fasteners

Structural screws are designed and tested to do hard work, but that doesn’t make them hard to use. In this post, Simpson Strong-Tie structural engineer Bryan Wert explains how the load-rated strength, versatility and easy installation of the code-listed Strong-Drive® SDWC Truss screw and SDWF Floor-to-Floor screw make it a cinch to create a continuous load path to resist wind uplift. 

Winter’s finally shedding her blanket and unveiling springtime in Texas. There’s now a short window of picture-perfect weather where my purchases at Home Depot are no longer foam hose bib covers to protect outdoor faucets from freezing temperature, but aren’t quite yet tiki torches and floats for the pool for hot and humid summer days. I find myself in the garden center looking at the freshly delivered trees, shrubs and flowers, along with just about every other adult in my city. This year, my wife’s decided we need to surround our outdoor living space with hanging planters displaying perky red, purple, yellow and blue flowers.
Continue Reading

Q&A About Fabric-Reinforced Cementitious Matrix

On February 14, we hosted the third interactive webinar in the Simpson Strong-Tie Composite Strengthening Systems™ Best Practices Series: “Introducing Fabric-Reinforced Cementitious Matrix (FRCM).”

Simpson Strong-Tie engineering manager Brad Erickson, S.E., P.E., and Simpson Strong-Tie senior product manager Mark Kennedy, PMP, conducted an informative discussion of this new product solution. You can view the webinar in our Training Center and take a course to earn one hour of CEUs, PDHs and AIA LU/HSW credits. The course and webinar discuss installation steps, identify projects where FRCM would be ideal, and cite testing and industry standards associated with FRCM.
Continue Reading

Simpson Strong-Tie® SET-3G™ Adhesive Offers a Ductile Solution for Post-Installed Anchorage near a Concrete Edge

Designing post-installed anchorage near a concrete edge is challenging, especially since the ACI provisions for cracked-concrete anchorage went into effect. In the following post, one of our field engineers, Jason Oakley, P.E., explains how SET-3G™ and Anchor Designer™ software from Simpson Strong-Tie make it easier to design a ductile anchor solution.

Engineers often provide holdown anchoring solutions near a concrete edge to help prevent overturning of light-frame shear walls during a seismic (or high-wind) event. Sometimes a post-installed anchor must be used if the cast-in-place anchor was mislocated or misinstalled, or is located where a retrofit or addition is needed. Since the cracked-concrete anchorage design provisions went into effect more than a decade ago, it has been challenging for engineers to offer a near-edge post-installed anchoring solution. This is especially true for structures subject to earthquake loads in seismic design category (SDC) C through F. Simpson Strong-Tie’s new SET-3G epoxy is the first anchoring adhesive in the industry to offer exceptionally high bond-strength values that permit ductile anchorage in concrete near an edge. This blog post will cover a specific example that focuses on Chapter 17 of ACI 318-14 to design a threaded rod, anchored with SET-3G adhesive, used to secure a holdown located 1 3/4″ away from a single concrete edge (Figure 1).
Continue Reading

How Computer Simulation Can Power Innovation

Computer-simulated product testing is being used increasingly in modern engineering and manufacturing because it provides a low-risk, time- and cost-efficient means of modeling system performance using a wide array of variables before a physical prototype has been created. The following Blog post outlines some of the uses and advantages of integrating this technology into the product development process.Continue Reading

AC398 Now Includes Moment Evaluation of Cast-in-Place Post Bases

This week’s post was written by Jhalak Vasavada, Research & Development Engineer at Simpson Strong-Tie.

When we launched our new, patent-pending MPBZ moment post base earlier this year, the evaluation of the moment capacity of post bases was not covered by AC398 – or by any other code, for that matter. There wasn’t a need – there were no code-accepted connectors available on the market for resisting moment loads.
Continue Reading