Treesearch

Currently, the North American standard, ANSI/APA PRG 320: Standard for Performance-Rated Cross-Laminated Timber, requires a full-scale compartment fire test to qualify adhesives for use in cross laminated timber (CLT) for structural applications. This test is necessary to determine whether the adhesives will experience heat delamination - a premature adhesive failure during fire that can lead to sudden fire regrowth during the decay phase of a fire commonly referred to as a secondary flashover. The required full-scale test is cost-prohibitive to adhesive manufacturers when developing new...

United States hardwood production and markets have seen a number of ups and downs over the last 20 years since peak production in the late 1990s, followed by historic lows during the "Great Recession" in 2009 and a slowly recovering industry since. During this time, we have seen the loss of domestic furniture and cabinet markets, increases in forest product export markets, trade disputes, reduced grade-lumber, and increased industrial wood demand, and most recently the COVID-19 crisis. With this backdrop, presenters from forest industry, wood market pricing services, and wood products...

Trees contain a number of different extractives that may have specific biological activities, many of which are capable of protecting the tree against different forms of infection. The hardwood species catalpa (Catalpa speciosa) is one of many types of wood that are rich with these chemicals. Researchers are often interested in extractives because knowledge of the defense mechanisms of trees against xenobiotics could potentially be applied to pharmaceutical development. For instance, literature indicates that catalpa wood often contains high concentrations of sterolic and phenolic compounds...

Casehardening is commonly misunderstood. This report should improve understanding of wood moisture issues, especially for the woodcrafters and woodworker.

The field of nondestructive evaluation (NDE) of materials is constantly evolving. This is especially true in the area of wood and fiber-based materials. A significant effort has been devoted toward the discovery and development of NDE technologies for use with wood-based products. Today, research and technology transfer efforts are underway throughout the world to further the development and use of nondestructive methods to address the many challenges that arise with using forest resources. Efforts are underway that span a broad spectrum of utilization and technology issues from those that...

Durable Solutions for Balconies and Decks is an illustrated guide that identifies design principles and construction practices to improve the moisture performance of wood-framed balconies and decks in low-and mid-rise multifamily buildings. Wood-framed construction is common for low-and mid-rise multifamily and mixed-use buildings containing apartments or condominiums, as well as commercial or retail spaces. It is also typical for these buildings to have balconies and decks in all or most dwelling units, for both their functional and architectural qualities. In terms of durability,...

Acetylation is a type of commercial wood modification used to enhance the durability of wood. Despite its adoption, especially in outdoor environments, there are mixed data on how acetylation affects the combustion of wood. This paper evaluates the differences in acetylated and untreated wood using a cone calorimeter in combination with Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) to look for acetic acid vapors in the combustion gases. Two thicknesses of acetylated pine boards were tested and compared against an untreated board from the same genus. No differences were observed between...

Mycelium-bonded bio-composites are an emerging class of novel materials developed over the past ten years. These have attracted significant research and commercialization interest with a steadily increasing number of papers, patents, and products. The basic idea behind these novel composites is to use fungal mycelia to bond substrates, mostly lignocellulosic biomass, together. Therefore, fungal mycelia in the system actually work as adhesives. This kind of adhesive is different from traditionally recognized resin-based adhesives in characteristics, processing, application field, and...

Following life-cycle assessment (LCA) methodology, this study presents a state-level estimation of embodied carbon of wood products harvested in 2019 from California and subsequently processed, manufactured, transported, used, and disposed at the end-of-life (EoL). In a conventional static approach to LCA, all GHG emissions were aggregated and considered to occur at year 0 of the given time horizon (500 years in this study) and used a static characterization factor (CF). In dynamic LCA, GHG emissions occurring in different years were considered, and their global warming impact (GWI) was...

The vexing error of excess variance in measurements of nanoparticle size distributions degrades accuracy in applications ranging from quality control of nanoparticle products to hazard assessment of nanoplastic byproducts. The particular importance of lipid nanoparticles for vaccine and medicine delivery motivates this Letter to the Editor, which concerns a publication 1 in ACS Nan and also presents original research. In ref 1, the benchmark measurements of a nanoparticle standard manifest large errors of the size distribution that contradict the claim of validation. In subsequent applicati...