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Swelling interactions of earlywood and latewood across a growth ring: global and local deformations

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Abstract

The sorption and swelling behavior of heterogeneous spruce wood samples is documented with high-resolution phase-contrast X-ray tomography combined with a dynamic vapor sorption analysis. Three samples extracted at the growth ring boundary contain almost equivalent volumes of earlywood and latewood tissues. The anisotropic swelling behavior of cellular wood material with different geometries and porosities is reported. In particular, the swelling anisotropy ratio in heterogeneous tissues is lower than the one seen in homogeneous wood specimens. This means that, due to the restraining effect of latewood on earlywood and vice versa, swelling of combined wood reduces and becomes less anisotropic. Hysteresis is no longer present when the affine swelling/shrinkage strain is considered as a function of moisture content, indicating that the same amount of moisture entering or exiting the cell wall material leads to the same swelling/shrinkage deformation of the cell material. Nevertheless, looking at non-affine deformations, using a modified B-spline algorithm, a local bending with respect to the latewood–earlywood interface is documented. In addition, the role of rays in the cellular structure in restraining the tangential swelling of thin-cell-walled earlywood is revealed. Finally, the swelling behavior of a greenwood sample is studied at cellular scale. The first desorption curve shows shrinkage strains that are not recovered under hygroscopic loading, and a similar, but of lesser magnitude, restraining effect is seen.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful for the financial support of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) under Grant No. 125184. This work has been granted by a Short Term Scientific Mission COST Action FP0802. The Special Research Fund of the Ghent University (BOF) is acknowledged for the postdoctoral grant to M.N. Boone. The experiments were carried out at the Laboratory of Wood Technology in Gent, Belgium, with the help of Prof Dr. Joris Van Acker. Finally, we acknowledge Dr. Michele Griffa for his scientific support and specially Roger Vonbank for the technical support to carry out the experimental work and Stephan Carl for his precious help in the development of the non-affine registration algorithm.

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Author notes

  1. Alessandra Patera

    Present address: Swiss Light Source of the Paul Scherrer Institute, 5232, Villigen, Switzerland

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Chair of Building Physics, ETH Zurich, Wolfgang-Pauli-Strasse 15, 8093, Zurich, Hönggerberg, Switzerland

    Alessandra Patera & Jan Carmeliet

  2. Laboratory for Building Science and Technology, EMPA, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Überlandstrasse 129, 8600, Dübendorf, Switzerland

    Alessandra Patera, Dominique Derome & Jan Carmeliet

  3. Department of Forest and Water Management – Laboratory of Wood Technology, Faculty of Bioscience Engineering, Woodlab-UGCT, Ghent University, Coupure Links 653, 9000, Ghent, Belgium

    Jan Van den Bulcke

  4. Department of Physics and Astronomy – Radiation Physics, Faculty of Science, RP-UGCT, Ghent University, Proeftuinstraat 86/N12, 9000, Ghent, Belgium

    Matthieu N. Boone

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  1. Alessandra Patera
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  2. Jan Van den Bulcke
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Correspondence to Alessandra Patera.

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Patera, A., Van den Bulcke, J., Boone, M.N. et al. Swelling interactions of earlywood and latewood across a growth ring: global and local deformations. Wood Sci Technol 52, 91–114 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00226-017-0960-3

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