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Understanding the effect of combined thermal treatment and phenol–formaldehyde resin impregnation on the compressive stress of wood

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Abstract

Thermal modification is widely applied to improve moisture dynamics of wood, however often decreasing the mechanical strength. It is therefore required to enhance the mechanical strength of thermally modified timber (TMT), for example by impregnation with adhesives. Specimens, cut from Douglas-fir, were thermally modified (TM) either after phenol formaldehyde (PF) resin impregnation (IM-TM) or before (TM-IM). The microstructural and chemical properties were investigated with SEM and FTIR. Compressive stress, as one of the important mechanical properties, was measured using a universal testing machine, while strain distribution was recorded with digital image correlation (DIC). The results show that the compressive stress of TM specimens can be enhanced significantly by PF resin impregnation. Compressive stress differences between IM-TM and TM-IM specimens are small despite of the larger amount of resin in TM-IM specimens. Thermal modification decomposes part of the PF resin in the cell lumens and promotes chemical reaction between the PF resin and wood. PF resin improves the stiffness and ductility of the wood cell wall, resulting in smaller strain and homogenous distribution thereof. These factors lead to high compressive stress of IM-TM and TM-IM specimens. Although PF resin impregnation contributes to narrowing strain accumulation in earlywood of TM specimens, control specimens have the smallest strain ratio between earlywood and latewood. The findings of this study are helpful for optimizing the cost effective thermal-impregnation technology of producing TMT with improved compressive stress.

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Acknowledgements

This study was financially supported by The National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (2021YFD2200602) and The Postgraduate Research and Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province (SJCX21_0333). We declare that we have no financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that can inappropriately influence our work, there is no commercial or associative interest that represents a conflict of interest in connection with the work submitted.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CoInnovation Center of Efficient Processing and Utilization of Forest Resources, Nanjing Forestry University, Longpan Road 159, Nanjing, 210037, China

    Wanzhao Li & Changtong Mei

  2. College of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanjing Forestry University, Longpan Road 159, Nanjing, 210037, China

    Wanzhao Li, Zheng Zhang, Kai Yang, Changtong Mei & Joris Van Acker

  3. UGent-Woodlab, Laboratory of Wood Technology, Department of Environment, Faculty of Bioscience Engineering, Ghent University, Coupure Links 653, 9000, Ghent, Belgium

    Jan Van den Bulcke & Joris Van Acker

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  1. Wanzhao Li
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  2. Zheng Zhang
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  3. Kai Yang
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  4. Changtong Mei
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Correspondence to Changtong Mei.

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Li, W., Zhang, Z., Yang, K. et al. Understanding the effect of combined thermal treatment and phenol–formaldehyde resin impregnation on the compressive stress of wood. Wood Sci Technol 56, 1071–1086 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00226-022-01400-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00226-022-01400-2

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