Temporal changes in strain condition on all lateral surfaces during pretreatment before timber drying

Abstract

Wood drying, such as boxed-heart square timber, often involves surface checks, which spoils the appearance of wood products and reduces their market value. Pretreatments are performed to avoid the surface checks, but detailed information about surface strain during timber drying remains unclear. In this study, surface strain detections were performed using two types of strain sensors (strain gauge and optical fiber strain sensor) to understand the surface dimensional changes during a series of pretreatments, consisting of steaming and high temperature and low humidity treatment. Simultaneous strain measurements based on the optical fiber sensor grasped the surface strain distributions in each lateral surface during timber drying; contraction behaviors were observed in the middle part of most surfaces in the early steaming stage, while one surface showed expansion. A remarkable expansion was detected in one surface during the high temperature and low humidity treatment, although most of the other surfaces showed gradual contraction behaviors. It was also discovered that the above detected behaviors were gradually reduced with the progress of each pretreatment.