Treesearch

On October 9, 2023, the main mast of the historic schooner Grace Bailey unexpectedly snapped at about two-thirds of its height and fell onto the deck, killing one passenger and injuring three others. The United States Coast Guard promptly initiated a formal investigation into the cause of the mast’s sudden failure. At the request of the Coast Guard, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory (FPL) conducted an on-site evaluation of the broken mast on December 19, 2023. The inspection used nondestructive testing methods and included visual analysis,...

While buildings have been constructed of wood for centuries, mass timber has revolutionized wood as a building material by enabling construction of high-rise wood buildings, thereby rivaling concrete and steel. Using cross-laminated timber—a form of mass timber made by stacking and adhering dried lumber in alternating directions into solid panels—can increase construction speeds while sequestering carbon, reducing emissions, and providing a market for sustainable forest products.As the number and complexity of structures made with cross-laminated timber continue to increase, critical fire...

A ductile lateral force resisting system (LFRS) for mass timber frames is proposed utilizing Mass Timber Buckling- Restrained Braces (MT-BRBs), with mass timber as the primary casing material. Compressive tests were conducted on Mass Plywood Panels (MPP) with and without horizontal self-tapping screws inserted perpendicular to laminations to assess differences in stiffness, peak load, and maximum displacement. Screws perpendicular to lamination enhanced performance, increasing the peak load by nearly four times and peak displacement by more than three times. Withdrawal tests were also...

An historic 1934 building on the campus of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory was deconstructed in 2010. The glued-laminated (glulam) beams from the building were preserved, creating a unique opportunity to test the casein adhesive bonding in the beams that had been in service for more than 75 years. The goal of the testing reported in this study was to extend the understanding of protein adhesives in wood products. In this study, we tested wet and dry strength of the bonds using compressive block shear tests. We also tested for delamination and...

In 2022, scientists from the Center for Wood Anatomy Research at the USDA Forest Products Laboratory published a field manual entitled Identification of Central American, Mexican, and Caribbean Woods. Bilingual with English and Spanish side-by-side on each page, this publication provided step-by-step processes with simple tools to enable readers with no previous experience in wood anatomy or identification to identify woods of the region. In use, the manual presented potential ergonomic challenges in both print and PDF formats. The objective of this project was to eliminate these challenges...

Near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy combined with partial least squares (PLS) regression has been widely used to predict the physical, mechanical, and chemical properties of wood. Recently, advanced modeling techniques such as deep learning and machine learning models using spectral data have increasingly been used to predict variability in wood physical and mechanical properties, but studies on chemical properties are scarce. Herein, southern pine wood samples were acquired from multiple height levels from 119 trees to yield 1007 pith-to-bark radial strips. The strips were scanned on an NIR...

This study surveyed dry kiln operations in the northeastern and north-central United States to understand current technology use and training needs. The research aimed to establish a better understanding of dry kiln production characteristics, prevailing tools and technology, and training requirements in the hardwood lumber drying industry to help providers better design training opportunities for the industry. Several different hardwood species were being dried by a majority of firms, while eastern white pine was the only softwood species dried by a majority of respondents. Key findings...

The use of downed timber from felled pine trees presents an opportunity to reduce economic losses and enhance sustainability in the forestry and construction industries. This study investigates the mechanical properties of lumber and cross-laminated timber panels from pine trees that were felled and then remained on the ground for up to 1 year. Time intervals included 0, 6, 9, and 12 months. Acoustic velocity (AV) and dynamic modulus of elasticity ( D MOE ) were used for nondestructive evaluation. Additional properties of interest included moisture content and density. After equilibration,...

The high price of pharmaceuticals is driven, in part, by the cost of materials and production. Some of the most expensive drugs contain chiral centers that are introduced during synthesis using a small number of chemical building blocks. These building blocks are both costly to produce and can lead to significant greenhouse gas emissions, both due to difficult recovery from low-concentration mixtures of chemical species and challenging reaction pathways. This work reports on a new approach for synthesizing pharmaceutical precursors that allows for the production of chiral species at high...

The remediation of heavy metal-contaminated environments, particularly those polluted with lead, remains a critical challenge due to the metal’s toxicity and persistence. This study developed a novel alkaline biochar for enhanced lead adsorption, prepared from pine wood through low-level NaOH (0–2 wt%) dry impregnation followed by pyrolysis at temperatures ranging from 350 to 600 °C. Characterization using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) elucidated the alkaline biochar’s...