Abstract

Different from most species of monocot clade, palm trees (Arecaceae) have woody materials which could be used for construction. However, the engineering embedment properties of coconut wood are not available in modern building codes. In this study, half-hole dowel embedment experiments, according to ASTM D5764-97a, were conducted on coconut wood with three dowel diameters in directions parallel and perpendicular to the grain for the full range of densities. The results showed that the empirical equations for common structural wood in an internationally acknowledged wood design standard overestimate the embedment strength of coconut wood by 32.9% on average.