The Design and Evaluation of Three-dimensional Corner Joints Used in Wooden Furniture Frames: Experimental and Numerical

This study aimed to design and evaluate the detachable corner joints used in wooden furniture frames, including a commonly used detachable joint (control) form using mortise and tenon with plug reinforcement and three novel proposed joints, i.e., novel joint I similar to III, which adopted in-line double-hole nuts, metal sheet connector, and embedded nuts and screws respectively, via numerical and experimental methods. The numerical analysis results indicated that the optimal proposed joint (novel joint I) had good mechanical performance when subjected to bending load with proper stress distributions and relatively low maximum stress compared with the other two proposed joints. The experimental results showed that the bending load resistance of the control and the optimal proposed joints were 1920 N (0.14) and 4390 N (0.05), respectively. The bending moment capacity and bending stiffness of the optimal joints were remarkably higher than the bending moment capacity and bending stiffness of the control joint. In addition, the combination of the numerical and experimental methods could effectively simplify the steps of furniture connection design and development and save costs in terms of time and materials.