Treesearch

Establishment of the Eastern subterranean termite, Reticulitermes flavipes in Endeavor, Wisconsin, in the early 1980s has caused significant damage to homes, businesses, and village properties over the years. Though precise reasons for successful establishment of the colony are still to be determined, we believe that the nearby lake and low-lying sandy soils have created conditions sufficient to sustain over-wintering of the colony. Previous successes of termite baiting in and around individual structures have prompted the hypothesis that treatment of this sort can also be applied on a...

The use of thermal treatments to enhance the moisture resistance and aboveground durability of solid wood materials has been studied for years. Much work was done at the Forest Products Laboratory in the last 15 years on the fundamental process of both short-and long-term exposure to heat on wood materials and its interaction with various treatment chemicals. This work eventually resulted in predictive models to assess both the effect of thermal exposure on both mechanical properties and wood chemistry as a function of temperature, time of exposure, and chemical environment. More recently,...

Engineered wood composites (EWC) offer significant potential in applications in the built environment, ranging from domestic dwellings to bridges and public buildings. Nevertheless, EWCs, which include products such as glulam, laminated veneer lumber, oriented stand-board, and plywood enjoy a relatively small market share of total wood-based material production and consumption in Europe at the present time. After briefly outlining the current use of timber in the built environment within Europe and examining trends, this paper will explore the potential for EWPs in the European Union....

Regardless of the type of construction, structures capable of containing a fully developed fire do not just happen. Fire walls or area separation walls play an important role in the building codes in that they allow each portion of a building separated by such walls to be treated as a separate building. Attention to construction details is critical to maximizing the ability of a structure to contain a fire until its extinguishment. Unprotected joints, gaps, and penetrations can affect the fire resistance of an otherwise well-constructed assembly. In the case of fires originating in...

The wood species most commonly used in construction have little natural durability Thus, they are treated with preservatives when used in conditions that favor biodeterioration. The type of preservative used varies with the type of wood product, exposure condition, and specific agent of deterioration. This paper discusses the characteristics of several preservative systems, which are grouped on the basis of their ability to protect wood in a range of exposure environments. Copper remains the primary biocide component used to protect wood used in contact with the ground or fully exposed to...

Moisture gradients in wood are known to affect the internal stresses that could cause dimensional changes and defects. Severe deformation of finished products has the potential to damage a manufacturer’s reputation and significantly increase the cost of manufacturing. An innovative approach to nondestructively examine the moisture gradients of different wood species using vertical density profiles from a commercial X-ray based density profiler was described and illustrated. The results indicate that the estimated moisture gradients by the X-ray technique matched well with the actual...

Good ideas and good science are not sufficient in and of themselves for successful commercialization of new technology. Understanding the barriers to commercialization so that ways around, under, over, or through them can be found is also crucial to success. Barriers can include market needs, technology push versus market pull, availability of a window of opportunity, economics, and risk aversion. A good starting point is to understand how the technology will fit in with a potential customer’s operation. Pushing technology usually is not successful because of customer concerns about new...

This study demonstrated that average ring width (or average annual radial growth rate) is a reliable parameter to quantify the effects of tree plantation density (growth suppression) on wood density and tracheid anatomical properties. The average ring width successfully correlated wood density and tracheid anatomical properties of red pines (Pinus resinosa Ait.) from a never-thinned experimental plantation forest with five different initial plantation densities. The results indicate that plantation density has a pronounced effect on earlywood growth, which resulted in increased latewood...

Interest in the commercial value of small-diameter timber has led to testing core samples with SilviScan to characterize density and transverse fiber dimensions. Data showed that latewood density and tracheid diameter in suppressed-growth material can vary spatially on a scale comparable to the 50-_m resolution of the instrument used in our testing. An optical imaging method called Ring Profiler was developed to determine what effect SilviScan’s resolution had on the measurements. A single suppressed-growth specimen of Douglas-fir was used to develop the method. Ring Profiler measurements...

Much of the current growth of wood-plastic composites (WPCs) is due to increased penetration into the decking market; therefore it has become imperative to understand the durability of WPCs in outdoor applications. In this study, wood flour filled high-density polyethylene (HDPE) composites were manufactured through either injection molding or extrusion. A set of extruded composites were also planed to remove the extruded surface. Composites were weathered in a xenon-arc weathering apparatus. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used to characterize the morphology of the composite...