The paper presents the results of investigation on seven glued laminated timber (GL24h class) bending beams. Bending strength and modulus of elasticity were determined. The beams were tested for four-point bending by loading them at a constant speed deflection. The strain gauge method and photoelastic coating technique were applied for strain distributions determination in selected cross-sections of the beams. Good agreement of the measurement results was obtained with both techniques. Application of the photoelastic coating technique enabled more detailed analysis of the beams failure mode, including timber defects influence on the strain distributions.
