Section 10:

PROPERTIES AND USE

OF WOOD

1
 Overview

Wood is a hard, fibrous tissue that can be found in the majority of trees.

It has been used for hundreds of thousands of years by man for both fuel
and as a construction material (great abundance on the Earth).

Components: wood is an organic material, a NATURAL COMPOSITE of

cellulose fibres (which are strong in TENSION) embedded in a matrix of
lignin which resists well under compression.

Functions in living trees:

- supporting function, enabling woody plants to grow large or to
stand up for themselves;
- contribution to the transfer of water and nutrients to the leaves
and other growing tissues.

Generally speaking, the term “wood” also refers to wood-derived materials,

such as wood chips or wood fibres. 2
The total phytomass (= total mass of plants) of the Earth is estimated to
be 1.24×1012 tons, of which 80 % is attributed to wood which grows at a
rate of 10 billion tons per year

Not only wood is the most important RENEWABLE NATURAL

RESOURCE in terms of quantity, but, because of its composition and
versatile properties, its use as a raw material for building (e.g. structural
timber, sawn wood, panels), furniture and other purposes is very
important from an economical viewpoint.
Note that, In industrialized countries, wood plays only a minor role as an
energy carrier (= fuel).

Even if wood can be considered a

RENEWABLE natural resource,
ITS WISE EXPLOITATION
(without any abuse)
MUST BE STRONGLY RECOMMENDED!
3
 History and… historical importance

A 2011 discovery in the Canadian province of New Brunswick allowed

finding the fossils of the earliest plants having grown wood (age: 395 to
400 million years ago).

People have used wood for millennia for many purposes, primarily as a
fuel or as a construction material for making houses, tools, weapons,
furniture, packaging, artworks and paper.
Note that wood exhibits a good bending strength!

Wood can be dated by dendrochronology (evaluation of the tree rings) in

order to make inferences about when a wooden object was created
(archaeological importance).

The year-to-year variation in tree ring widths can also give useful
information about the prevailing climate at that time (the growth in
thickness of wood depends on the temperature of environment and other
factors).
4
 Chemistry of wood
Main constituents of wood:
- water (inside cells or in wood cavity as adsorbed humidity);
- CELLULOSE, a crystalline polymer derived from glucose;
- HEMICELLULOSE, mainly formed by different 5-carbon sugars (including
glucose) that are linked in an irregular manner, in contrast to the cellulose;
- LIGNIN, that confers hydrophobic properties due to the fact that it is based on
aromatic rings.

These three components are interwoven, and direct covalent linkages exist
between the lignin and the hemicellulose.

5
Glucose Glucose

CELLULOSE

HEMICELLULOSE

LIGNIN
6
In addition to cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin and water, wood consists of
a variety of low molecular weight organic compounds, called extractives.

The major wood extractives are fatty acids, resin and waxes.
Example: resin is exuded by conifers as protection from insects.

Some experiments on very resinous Longleaf Pine specimens indicate an

increase in mechanical strength due to the resin, which increases the
strength when dry. Such resin-saturated woods are almost impervious to
rot and termites; however they are very flammable. Spruce impregnated
with crude resin and dried has higher strength compared to resin-free
wood.

7
 Growth rings

Wood, in the strict sense, is yielded by trees, that increase in diameter by the
formation, between the existing wood and the inner bark, of new woody layers which
envelop the entire stem, living branches and roots.

The process of “wood formation” (or wood growth) is the result of wood cells division
in the vascular cambium (consisting of cells that are partly specialized in
transporting water solutions and lymph, see the image) and subsequent expansion
of the new cells.

Where there are clear seasons, growth

can occur in a discrete annual or
seasonal pattern, thereby leading to
growth annual rings, that are typically
visible on the surface of a log. Where
there is no seasonal difference, growth
rings are indistinct or almost absent.

The annual rings of growth are for many

years quite wide ( fast growth of the
tree during its early years), but later
they become narrower and narrower. 8
A growth ring does not appear to be homogeneous but some differences can be
distinguished.
The part of a growth ring nearest to the centre of the tree, and formed early in the
growing season when growth is rapid, is usually lighter in colour than that near to
the outer portion of the ring, and it is known as earlywood (or springwood).
The outer portion formed later in the season (darker colour) is then known as the
latewood.
The springwood part of a growth ring is usually larger than the latewood one.

9
 Typical structure
of a growth ring

Earlywood:
wood cells are large
due to the need for
water transport during
the tree growth (which
occurs during spring
and summer).

Latewood: wood cells are very smaller almost no need for water uptake
10
during autumn and winter (when the tree growth stops)
 Heartwood and sapwood
Heartwood is typically darker than Heartwood (or duramen) is “dead”
sapwood. wood that became highly resistant
to decay.
Abnormal coloration of wood can Heartwood formation occurs
involve a diseased condition (e.g. spontaneously over time as it is a
FUNGI) with associated mechanical genetically programmed process.
weakness.

Sapwood (or alburnum) is the younger,

outermost wood; in the growing tree it is
living wood, and its most important
functions are to conduct water from the
roots to the leaves and to store up and
give back according to the season the
reserves prepared in the leaves.
Note that all wood in a tree is first
formed as sapwood.

A section of a Yew (Taxus tree) branch showing 27

annual growth rings, pale sapwood and dark
11
heartwood, and pith (the central dark spot).
 Knots in wood
A knot is a particular type of imperfection in a piece of wood; it will affect the
technical properties of the wood, usually for the worse, but may be also exploited
for obtaining nice aesthetic effects or for attracting visual interest.

In a longitudinally sawn plank, a knot will appear as a roughly circular “solid” (usually
darker) piece of wood around which the grain of the rest of the wood “flows” (i.e.,
parts and rejoins).

Origin of knots:
they are usually the base of a side branch and are conical
in shape (hence the roughly circular cross-section) with
the inner tip at the point in stem diameter at which the
plant’s vascular cambium was located when the branch
formed as a bud.
During the development of a tree, the lower limbs often
die but may remain attached for a time, sometimes years.
Subsequent layers of growth of the attaching stem are no
longer intimately joined with the dead limb, but grew
around it. Hence, dead branches produce knots which are
not attached, and likely dropped out after the tree has
been sawn into boards. 12
Influence on mechanical properties:
• Knots materially affect cracking and warping, ease of working and cleavability of
timber; in general, they weaken timber and lower its suitability for structural
purposes (where mechanical strength is an important consideration).
• The weakening effect is much more serious when timber is subjected to forces
perpendicular to the grain (risk of knot pull-out and formation of
PORES/HOLES) and/or tension than where under load along the grain.
• Knot-induced weakening effect depends on knot position, size, number and
condition (e.g., knots near the ends/border of a wood beam/panel do not weaken it).
• Knots do not necessarily influence the stiffness of structural timber, which can
partially depend on the knot size and location, but stiffness and elastic strength are
more dependent on the soundness of the entire wood product than on localized
defects; on the contrary, the breaking strength is very susceptible to localized
defects (like knots).
• Normally, sound knots do not weaken wood when subjected to compression
parallel to the grain.

13
Some considerations about wood type, knots and mechanical properties

• When a tree is very young, it is covered with limbs almost – if not entirely – to the
ground, but as it grows older some or all of them will eventually die and are either
broken off or fall off. Therefore, the sapwood of an old tree will be freer from
knots (= limbs remnants) than the inner heartwood. Since knots generally
weaken the timber and interfere with its ease of working and other properties, it
follows that a given piece of sapwood, because of its position in the tree, may be
well stronger than a piece of heartwood from the same tree.

• On the other hand, it is remarkable that the inner heartwood of old trees
remains sound for hundreds, and in a few instances thousands, of years.

• Different pieces of wood cut from a large tree may remarkably differ,
particularly if the tree is big and mature (sapwood vs. heartwood).

• In summary, the mechanical behaviour of wood can widely differ

depending on the tree type, age, health conditions. However, note
that the presence of knots can weaken, in general, the
hearthwood of old trees (as mentioned above).
14
 Water content

In living wood, water occurs in three conditions:

1) in the walls of wood cells;
2) in the protoplasmic contents of the cells;
3) as free water in the cell cavities and spaces.

In heartwood water primarily occurs only in the form (1) note that hearthwood is
almost completely “dead” wood!

Wood that is thoroughly air-dried retains 8-16 %wt. of the water in the cell walls, and
none (or practically none) in the other forms.
Even oven-dried wood retains a small percentage of moisture, but for all except
chemical purposes it may be considered practically dry.

The general effect of the water content upon the wood is to make it softer and
more pliable. A similar effect of common observation is in the softening action of
water on paper or cloth.

Within certain limits, the greater the water content, the greater its softening
effect.
15
Drying generally produces a significant increase in the strength of
wood (compression and bending), particularly in small specimens.

Example: a completely dry spruce block (5 cm in section) will sustain a

permanent load 4 times greater with respect to a “green” (wet) block of the
same size.

Wood volume (cm3)

Qualitative plots illustrating
volume-humidity
relationship.
Limit of saturation
Wood humidity content:
[(Mhumid – Mdry) / M dry]×100 Wood humidity content (%)

Influence on the
mechanical properties
16
Variations of adsorbed water in cells imply dimensional variations
(swelling), the entity of which depends on the direction.

During the seasoning:

0.1% in the longitudinal direction,
1-10% in the transverse direction;
5% in radial direction,
10% in the tangential direction
according to the cutting position

Cracks due to constraints that

avoid wood swelling

17
 Hardwood and softwood

There is a strong relationship between the properties of wood and the

properties of the particular tree that yielded it.

The density of wood varies with species and is strongly related to its strength (and
other mechanical properties). As a “rule of thumb”, generally, the higher the
density, the higher the mechanical strength of wood.

Examples:
- mahogany is a medium-dense (0.6-0.8×103 kg/m3) hardwood (excellent for fine
furniture crafting);
- balsa is light (0.16×103 kg/m3), making it useful for model building;
- the so-called “ironwoods” (e.g. Acacia, Carpinus, Ebony) are extremely dense (for
ebony 1.1-1.3×103 kg/m3), hard and high-strength woods.

Wood types are typically classified as either softwood or hardwood.

The wood from conifers (e.g. pine) is called softwood, and the wood from
dicotyledons (usually broad-leaved trees, e.g. oak) is called hardwood.

Note that these names are CONVENTIONAL: for instance, some hardwoods (e.g.
balsa) have lower mechanical properties than many softwoods.
18
 Orthotropy of wood
In mechanics, a material is defined orthotropic if it is anisoptropic but the
mechanical features of any of its points can be evaluated by knowing the
mechanical features along 2 particular direction, that are mutually
perpendicular and are called directions of orthotropy.

Wood has three directions of orthotropy (we can thus select three “couples”):
- axial direction (A, along the grain and perpendicular to the cross-section)
- radial direction (R)
- tangential direction (T)
A
Cross-section
The Hankinson’s equation predicts the
compressive strength of wood. For a wood α
that has uniaxial compressive strengths of σ0
parallel to the grain (direction A) and σ90
R
perpendicular to the grain (direction R), the T Tangential
section
uniaxial compressive strength of the wood in
a direction forming an angle α with the grain Radial section
is given by:

19
 Some representative (mean) values:

Species Density Bending Elastic

(×103 kg/m3) strength modulus
(MPa) (GPa)
Coniferous

(softwood)

Spruce 0.46 75 11
Species

Pine 0.49 87 12
Larch 0.59 96 14
Balsa 0.17 19 3
Broad-leaved

(hardwood)

Oak 0.76 94 13
trees

Ebony 1.2 240 25

Wood has been widely used since the ancient times

especially due to its good resistance upon FLEXURE:
the bending strength of some type of wood can be comparable (or even
superior) to that of modern materials such as concrete. 20
21
The TENSILE STRENGTH of wood is higher than the
compressive one. Tension
(direction A)

Stress (MPa)
Anisotropy of wood: Compression
(direction A)
Example for softwood (e.g. pine): tensile strength =
100 MPa along the direction A (low deformation: 1-2 %)
5 MPa along the direction R higher deformation
3 MPa along the direction T (in comparison to A) Strain (%)

The elastic modulus along the directions R and T is lower of one order of magnitude
with respect to that measured along the direction A.

Wood failure due to a compressive load Load

Load
does not ensue in the formation and
propagation of micro-cracks, but evolves in a
corrugation due to fibres deformation; the
direction of the wrinkling propagation is
perpendicular to the direction of the applied
compressive force. 22
Overview of wood-derived products and substances

23
From: M. Paulitsch. Moderne Holzwerkstoffe, Springer-Verlag, Berlin 1989, p. 59.
Economic aspects!

Thermal insulation!

24
 Uses of wood
Fuel
Wood has a long history of being used as fuel, which continues till now. Hardwood
is preferred over softwood because it creates less smoke and burns longer.

Construction
Wood has been an important construction material since man began building
shelters, houses and boats. Nearly all boats were made out of wood until the late
19th century, and wood remains in common use today in boat construction.
Wood to be used for construction work is commonly known as lumber in North
America. Elsewhere in the world, lumber usually refers to felled trees, and the word
for sawn planks ready for use is timber.
Engineered wood products are commonly used in both residential and commercial
buildings as structural or aesthetic materials.
In buildings made of other materials, wood is used as supporting material, especially
in roof construction, in interior doors and their frames, and in exterior coverings
and claddings.
Wood is also commonly used as shuttering material to form the mould into which
concrete is poured during reinforced concrete fabrication. 25
Uses in the arts
Sculptures, musical instruments (e.g. the “strings” family), engraving works.

Engineered wood
Engineered wood products, i.e. glued wood products that have been “engineered”
for application-specific performance requirements, are often used in construction
and industrial applications.
Glued engineered wood products are manufactured by bonding together wood
strands, lumber or other forms of wood fibres with glue to form a larger, more
efficient composite structural unit. These products include glued laminated timber
(“glulam” or lamellar wood: the fibres of all the wood lamellae are parallel high
mechanical strength), plywood (obtained by gluing together large wood sheets) and
structural panels (obtained starting from shavings and sawdust, that are first coated
with a polymeric resin and then hot-pressed to obtain the panels).
Engineered wood products display highly predictable and reliable performance
characteristics and provide enhanced design flexibility (very small or very large
dimensions of the products or applications). They may also be selected for specific
projects (e.g. public swimming pools or ice rinks) where, thanks to proper chemicals
added to the glue, the wood will not deteriorate and will be less susceptible to the
humidity changes commonly found in these environments. 26
PLYWOOD

Thin layers of wood, obtained by peeling

the trunk, are overlapped with different
orientation of the fibers and glued
together (3 or more layers, 1-3 mm thick
each one).

a) Plywood b) core plywood

Introducing strips of wood between

two layers of peeled wood
27
CHIPBOARD
Wood chips glued together and pressed between two layers of peeled wood.
Mono- or multi-layer chipboard

Thickness from 2 mm to 4 cm

Chipboards are weaker than plywoods

with the same thickness

28
 LAMINATED WOOD or «GLULAM»

Lamella: few tens of mm thick

LW is made of several layers of

lamellae joined together with parallel
overlapping of fibers and glued
«Finger-like» joint

Wood lamella

Laminated wood is a material with more constant and homogeneous

characteristics than many solid wood. If subjected to cycles of wetting
and drying, it can undergo delamination 29
Effects on KNOTS

30
Engineered wood products prove to be more environmentally friendly and, if
used appropriately, are often less expensive than other building materials such as
steel or concrete. These products are extremely eco-friendly because they involve
the use if renewable resources (WHOSE ABUSE MUST BE IN ANY CASE
AVOIDED!) with minimal waste. In most cases, engineered wood products are
produced using faster growing and often underutilized wood species from managed
forests and tree farms.
Wood unsuitable for construction in its native form may be broken down
mechanically (into fibres or chips) or chemically (to obtain cellulose) and used as a
raw material for other building materials, such as the engineered wood itself.
Wood derivatives can also be used for some kinds of flooring, such as laminate
flooring.

Wood can be cut into straight planks and

made into a wood flooring
(the so-called parquet). 31
 Toxicological aspects: wood dust

In the production and processing of wood-based materials the formation of fine dust
particles cannot be avoided.
Suspicion has existed for a long time that prolonged occupational contact with wood
dust increased the risk of development of adenocarcinomas in the inner nose. On
the basis of statistical investigations – which was first conducted in the wood industry
in United Kingdom from 1956 to 1965 –, there are now clear evidences that workers
in the wood industry have a thousandfold greater risk of developing nose cancer than
other workers.
No clear explanation has been ultimately found as to why wood dust should be
carcinogenic; natural wood components, materials used in working and processing
wood, metabolites of wood fungi, pyrolysis products from processing or simple
mechanical irritation could be responsible for the development of adenocarcinomas.
However, wood components (particularly those of some hardwoods) have been
suggested to be mutagenic and carcinogenic.
Besides a large number of mutagenicity tests with wood extracts, epidemiological
investigations of nose cancer in various countries, in particular, have led to the
formulation of preventive measures (face protection). In many countries,
adenocarcinomas of the nose have been recognized as occupational diseases of
workers in the wood industry. 32
 Weathering of wood
Wood can be subjected to different weathering phenomena:

Hygrometric weathering
Wood contains water and can absorb further relevant water amount
(humidity) from air; due to sudden humidity reduction (i.e. strong decrease
in the water content adsorbed by wood) material shrinkage can occur
formation of cracks or pores points of mechanical weakness and
preferential entrance of other weathering agents.

Physical weathering
It is common to all porous materials: freezing-thawing cycles, crystallization
of soluble salts (also referred to as a physico-chemical phenomenon).

Chemical deterioration
- UV radiation: oxidation and breaking especially of cellulose molecules
chromatic alteration (visual effect), nano- and micro-cracks formation
(mechanical weakening)
- acid attack degradation and breaking of cellulose, hemicellulose and
lignin molecules 33
Biological agents

It is the most common and dramatic case of wood deterioration and it is

due to the presence and action of fungi and/or insects.

Wood is particularly susceptible of biological attack in some conditions: at

least 15 % wood humidity for insect and 20 % wood humidity for fungi.

Effect of insects attack: wood deterioration involving material removal

Effect of fungi attack: deterioration of wood constituents:

- brown caries: deterioration of cellulose
- white caries: deterioration of cellulose and lignin, with white
areas due to selective deterioration of lignin
- soft caries: the entire cell wall is attacked (cellulose +
hemicellulose + lignin) “softening” of wood

34
Under favourable condition (wood humidity > 15 %), insects grow as larvae
inside the wood and dig tunnels inside the materials (insects get their own
nutrients from cellulose digestion).

When the insects become “adult”, they emerge from wood through holes
on the wood surface.

Tunnels and holes are weakening elements in wood (decrease of

mechanical strength, entrance for other weathering agents).

The length of tunnels as well as the size of the emerging holes allow to
understand what insect species has benne responsible for wood
degradation prevention or restoration interventions should be always
carefully programmed for each specific case.

Termites (white ants) are very aggressive and dangerous insects, as they
can dramatically deteriorate the interior of wood beams without almost any
visible sign of external damage.
35
Typical emerging holes of
woodworms in a wood beam

Wood beams without any apparent

sign of external damage

BUT:
along the wood beam
section, the typical
parallel tunnels produced
by termites were found!
36
How to face an insect attack in wood?

1) Recognition of the insect species

2) Disinfestation
- use of appropriate “woodworm-repellent” products (liquids that
can be also used in situ by a syringe to perform a localized action, gases)
- possible use of advanced techniques (e.g. death of insects induced by
γ-rays irradiation)

3) After insect elimination, use of consolidating agents and/or preserving

agents is often recommended; usually, ORGANIC BINDERS are used:
- Natural binding agents: natural wax o resin (amber), polysaccharides (starch,
cellulose), glues derived from animal protein (casein).
- Synthetic binding agents: epoxy resins, poly(ethylen glycol) (PEG).

Use of consolidating agents for puttying (filling of macroscopic cracks or voids)

can be useful to prevent further deterioration.

Use of consolidating and preserving agents against humidity is also

recommended to treat wood damaged by fungi. 37
 Effects of fungi

Brown caries
White caries

Common final result:

38
breaking of the wood beam!
 Concluding remarks about wood
Nature is an excellent “material designer”, and wood is a valuable natural
material for building if it is WISELY exploited and employed!
Wood buildings, structures and products can potentially last hundreds of years
without weakening or damage.

Example:
the so-called “Stave churches” in Norway (12th century) built by using pinewood.
These churches are used still today
(after 1000 years!) without undergoing
almost no significant restoration thanks
to some important construction “skills”:
☺ wood structure on pore-free stone
foundations (a stone wall is visible) to
avoid capillary rise of water
(humidity) from the ground
☺ wood protection against air
humidity by using pine pitch or resin
☺ sharp roof to sustain the snow
weight (wood has a rather good
bending resistance but if the applied 39
load is too large wood beams fracture!)
 Some practical applications…

CASE 1: long-term strength

Check if a beam of coniferous wood (e.g. pine) can withstand a compressive
axial load of 80 kN.
If so, assess the deformation of the wood beam due to the applied load.

Geometry of the wood beam: circular cross-section with d = 20 cm, L = 2 m

Environment: relative humidity RU = 85%, T = 20 °C
Mech. properties of wood: axial compressive strength Rk = 20 MPa, E= 10 GPa

***********************
The characteristic values of tensile and compressive strength for wood are obtained
by standard tests (short-time tests on defect-free specimens under controlled
environmental conditions with T = 20 °C and RU = 65%) → corrective coefficients
must be used for taking into account the effects of RU and duration of load
application:

Rd = kmod * Rk
εd = εinitial * (1+kdef)
Values of the coefficient kmod from Eurocode 5:

Class of load Class of humidity

duration
1 (12%) 2 (18%) 3 (>18%)
Permanent (>10 0,60 0,60 0,50
years)
Long (max 10 0,70 0,70 0,55
years)
Mid (max 6 0,80 0,80 0,65
months)
Short (max 1 0,90 0,90 0,70
week)
Impulse load 1,10 1,10 0,90
Values of the coefficient kdef from Eurocode 5:

Class of load Class of humidity

duration
1 (12%) 2 (18%) 3 (>18%)
Permanent (>10 0,60 0,80 2,00
years)
Long (max 10 0,50 0,50 1,50
years)
Mid (max 6 0,25 0,25 0,75
months)
Short (max 1 0 0 0,30
week)
Rd = Rk * kmod = 20 MPa * 0,60 = 12 MPa
Ab = π/4 * (200 mm)2 = 31400 mm2
σc = 80 (kN)/Ab (mm2) = 2,55 MPa
σc < Rd
THE WOOD BEAM IS ABLE TO WITHSTAND THE
APPLIED LOAD PERMANENTLY

εinitial = σc/E = 2,55 (MPa)/10*103 (MPa)= 2,55*10-4 (~0,025%)

∆Linitial = (2,55 * 10-4)*(2 *103 mm) = 0,5 mm
εt>10 years = εinitial * (1+kdef) = 0,025% * 1,8 = 0,46%
∆Lt>10 years = (4,6*10-4) * (2*103 mm) = 0,9 mm
CASE 2: resistance to fire
• Wood can burn-off (pirolysis, similar to polymers and organic substances)
• Degradation of wood due to fire involves the progressive carbonization of outer
layers
• Wood is a good thermal-insulating material → high T is not reached during
combustion, unless around metallic inserts
• Mechanical properties are preserved in the core
• Slow carbonization rate (0,5-0,8 mm/min)
• The required strength is mantained untill the residual cross-section is able to
withstand the applied load
La zona carbonizzata isola gli
strati interni
Check if the wood beam of CASE 1 can withstand the applied load (80 kN)
for 30 min in case of fire (the carbonization rate is assumed uniform and
equal to 0,8 mm/min).

Thickness of the carbonized layer in 30 min:

S = 0,8 mm/min * 30 min= 24 mm

Residual diameter after 30 min:

d30 min = dinitial – 2S = 200 mm – (2 * 24 mm) = 152 mm

σc = 80 kN/[(π/4) * (152 mm)2] = 4,41 MPa < Rd (12 MPa)

THE WOOD BEAM CAN STILL WITHSTAND THE LOAD

AFTER 30 min OF FIRE