CE 106 Construction Materials and Testing Module No.

10

c CHAPTER 10

WOOD
OVERVIEW

Wood, because of its availability, relatively low cost, ease of use, and durability, if properly maintained,
continues to be an important civil engineering material. Wood is used extensively for buildings, bridges,
utility poles, floors, roofs, trusses and piles. Civil engineers use both natural wood and engineered wood
products, such as laminates, plywood, and strand board.

OBJECTIVES

At the end of this module, you will be able to learn the following:

1. Wood Production
2. Defects in lumber
3. Different properties of Wood: Physical, Mechanical and Strength properties
4. Testing methods to determine mechanical properties of a wood
5. Engineered Wood Products

DEFINITION

Wood is a natural, renewable product from trees. Biologically, a tree is a woody plant that attains a
height of at least 6m(20ft), normally has a single self-supporting trunk with no branches for about 1.5m
(4ft) above the ground, and has a definite crown.
Trees are classified as either endogenous or exogenous based on the type of growth.
Endogenous trees, such as bamboo, grow with intertwined fibers. Exogenous trees grow from the
center out by adding concentric layers of wood around the central core. Wood from endogenous
trees is generally not used for engineering applications thus this chapter considers only exogenous
trees.
Exogenous trees are broadly classified as deciduous and conifers; they are hardwoods and
softwoods, respectively. They are classified within the tree family, not a description of the woods’
characteristics. In general, softwoods are softer, less dense, and easier to cut than hardwoods.

PANGASINAN STATE UNIVERSITY 1

CE 106 Construction Materials and Testing Module No. 10

MOISTURE CONTENT
The moisture content of a wood specimen is the weight of the water in the specimen expressed as a
percentage of the oven-dry weight of the wood. An oven dried wood sample is one that has been
dried in an oven at 100oC to 105oC until the wood attains a constant weight.

Moisture exists in wood as either bound or free water. Bound water is held within the cell wall
by adsorption forces, whereas free water exists as either condensed water or water vapor in the cell
cavities. The level of saturation at which the cell walls are completely saturated but no free water
exists in the cell cavities is called the fiber saturation point (FSP).

When the moisture content of wood is above the FSP, the wood is dimensionally stable.
However, moisture fluctuations below that point always result in dimensional changes. Shrinkage is
caused by moisture loss from the cell walls and conversely selling is caused by moisture gain in the cell
walls.

WOOD PRODUCTION
Trees are harvested in the fall or winter because of their water content and because of environmental
concerns connected with frie hazard and other plant growth. A vast industry has developed to harvest
and process wood. Wood is harvested from forests as logs. They are transported to sawmills where
they are cut into dimensional shapes to produce variety of products for engineering applications.

1. Dimensional Lumber – wood from 50-125mm thick, sawn on all four sides. This is produced in
lengths of 2.4-7.2m in 0.6m increments. Dimensional lumber is typically used for studs, sill and to
plates, joints, beams rafters, trusses and decking.

2. Heavy timber – wood sawn on all four sides. As the case of dimensional lumber, these sizes
specify rough-sawn dimensions in inches. They are used for heavy-frame construction,
landscaping, railroad ties, and marine construction.

3. Round stock – posts and poles used for building poles, marine piling and utility poles.

4. Engineering wood – products manufactured by bonding together wood strands, veneers,

lumber and other forms of wood fiber to produce a larger and integral composite unit. These
products are engineered and tested to have specific mechanical response to loads. Structural
engineered wood products include:
a) structural panels including plywood, oriented strand-board, and composite panels.
b) Glued laminated timber
c) Structural composite lumber
d) Wood I-joists

5. Specialty Items – milled and fabricated products to reduce on-site construction time. These
items include lattice, hand rails, spindles, radius-edge decking and turned posts.

CUTTING TECHNIQUES
The harvested wood is cut into lumber and timber at sawmills using circular saws, band saws, or frame
saws. The quality of the boards depends on how the angle of the growth ring is positioned in relation
to the face of the board. These are three categories as illustrated:

1. Flat-sawn (45o or less)

2. Rift-sawn (45o - 80o)
3. Vertical or edge-sawn (80o – 90o)

PANGASINAN STATE UNIVERSITY 2

CE 106 Construction Materials and Testing Module No. 10

Flat sawn boards have desirable exposure of grain for decorative applications. However, flat-sawn
boards tend to distort more than vertical-sawn boards in response to moisture fluctuations. Hence,
vertical sawn boards are generally better for structural applications.

DEFECTS IN LUMBER
Lumber may include defects that affect either its appearance or mechanical properties or both.
These defects can have many causes, such as natural growth of the wood, wood diseases, animal
parasites, too-rapid seasoning or faulty processing. Some common defect types are shown in figure
below.

Knots
A knot is a branch base that has become incorporated into the wood of the tree trunk or another
limb. Knots degrade the mechanical properties of lumber, affecting the tensile and flexural strengths.

Shakes
Shakes are lengthwise separations in the wood that occur between annual rings. They could be due
to the tree bending under the force of heavy winds.

Wane
A wane is bark or other soft material left on the edge of the board.

Sap Streak
A sap streak is a heavy accumulation of sap in the fibers of the wood that produces a distinctive
colored streak.

Reaction Wood
Reaction wood is the abnormally woody tissue that forms in crooked stems or limbs. It causes the pith
to be off-center from the neutral axis of the tree.

Pitch Pockets
Pitch pockets are well defined openings between annual rings that contain free resin.

Bark Pockets
Bark pockets are small patches of bark embedded in the wood. These pockets form a result of an
injury to the tree, causing death to a small rea of the cambium.

PANGASINAN STATE UNIVERSITY 3

CE 106 Construction Materials and Testing Module No. 10

Checks
Checks are ruptures in wood along the grain, which develop during seasoning. They can occur on
the surface or end of a board

Splits
Splits are lengthwise separations of the woods caused by either mishandling or seasoning.

Warping
Warping is the distortion of wood from the desired true plane. The four major types of warping are
bowing, crooking, cupping and twisting. It is the result of uneven drying due to the production
environment or the release of internal tree stress.

PANGASINAN STATE UNIVERSITY 4

CE 106 Construction Materials and Testing Module No. 10

PHYSICAL PROPERTIES
Important physical properties include specific gravity and density, thermal properties and electrical
properties.

Specific Gravity and Density

Specific gravity of wood depends on cell size, and cell wall thickness and number and types of cells.
Regardless of species, the cell has a specific gravity of 1.5. Because of this consistency, specific gravity
is an excellent index for the amount of substance a dry piece of wood actually contains, and it is
nearly constant within each species. Therefore, specific gravity (or density) is a commonly cited
property and is an indicator of mechanical properties within a clear, straight-gained wood.

The dry density of wood ranges from 160 kg/m3 for balsa to 1000kg/m3 for other species. The majority
of wood types have densities in the range of 300 to 700kg/m 3.

Thermal Properties:

Thermal Conductivity. Thermal conductivity is a measure of the rate at which heat flows through a
material. The reciprocal of thermal conductivity is the thermal resistance value (R). Wood has a
thermal conductivity that is a fraction of most metals and three to four times greater than common
insulating materials.

Specific Heat. Specific heat of a material is the ratio of the quantity of heat required to raise the
temperature of the material 1o to that required to raise the temperature of an equal mass of water 1 o,

Thermal Diffusivity. Thermal diffusivity is a measure of the rate at which a material absorbs heat from
its surroundings. The thermal diffusivity for wood is much smaller than that of other common building
materials.

Coefficient of Thermal Expansion. The coefficient of thermal expansion is a measure of dimensional

changes caused by a temperature variance. Thermal expansion coefficients for completely dry wood
are positive in all directions.

Electrical Properties
Air-dry wood is a good electrical insulator. As the moisture content of the wood increases, the resistivity
decreases by a factor of three for each percentage of moisture content.

MECHANICAL PROPERTIES
It is necessary to understand the mechanical properties of wood before a wood structure an be
properly designed. Typical mechanical properties of interest to civil and construction engineers
include modulus of elasticity, strength properties, creep and damping capacity.

Modulus of Elasticity
the typical stress-strain relation of wood is linear up to a certain limit, then a small nonlinear curve
occurs after which the wood fails. The modulus of elasticity of wood is the slop of the linear portion of
the representative stress-strain curve. The stress-strain relation of wood varies within and between
species and is affected by variation in moisture content and specific gravity.

PANGASINAN STATE UNIVERSITY 5

CE 106 Construction Materials and Testing Module No. 10

STRENGTH PROPERTIES
Strength properties of wood vary widely depending on the direction of grain relative to the direction
of force. For example, the tensile strength in the longitudinal direction (parallel to grain) is more than
20times the tensile strength in the radial direction (perpendicular to grain). Also, the tensile strength in
the longitudinal direction is larger than the compressive strength in the same direction. Common
strength properties for wood include modulus of rupture in bending, compressive strength parallel and
perpendicular to the grain and shear strength parallel to the grain.

TESTING TO DETERMINE MECHANICAL PROPERTIES

Figure below shows a schematic of test specimens of wood tested in tension, compression, bending,
and hardness. Static and impact bending, compression and tension parallel and perpendicular to the
grain and shear parallel to the grain are commonly used.

Static Bending Test

This test is performed on either 50mm x 50mm x 760mm or 25mm x 25mm x 410mm specimens. For the
large sized specimens, the loading head is placed on the center of specimen and over a span of
710mm, whereas the load is applied at a rate of 2.5mm/min. For the small sized specimens, the loading
head is placed on the center of the specimen and over a span of 360mm, and the load is applied at
a rate of 1.3mm/min.

𝑴𝒄
Modulus of rupture =
𝑰

M = bending moment at failure

c = ½ of specimen height
I = moment of Inertia of the specimen cross section

PANGASINAN STATE UNIVERSITY 6

CE 106 Construction Materials and Testing Module No. 10

Compression Test

The compression test parallel to the grain is performed on either 50mm x 50mm x 200mm or 25mm x
25mm x 100mm specimens. The load is applied at a rate equal to 0.003mm/mm of the nominal
specimen length per minute. The type of failure can be classified as crushing, wedge, split, shearing,
compression, and shearing and brooming and end-rolling.

The compression test perpendicular to grain is performed on 50mm x 50mm x 150mm specimens. The
load is applied through a metal bearing plate 50mm wide, centered across the upper surface of the
specimen. The load is applied at a rate of 0.305mm/min (0.012 in/min). Deflection readings are taken
to 0.002mm. Load and deformation are measured until the deformation is 2.5mm.

ENGINEERED WOOD PRODUCTS

Engineered wood includes a wide variety of products manufactured by bonding together wood
strands, veneers, lumber or other forms of wood fibers to produce large and integral units. These
products are “engineered” to produce specific and consistent mechanical behavior and thus have
consistent design properties.

Glued-Laminated Timbers

Laminated timbers are composed of two or more

wood layers glued together with the grain of all layers
parallel. Almost any other species can be used when
their mechanical and physical properties are suited
for the design requirements.

Glued-Laminated wood is used for structural beams

and columns, furniture, sports equipment, and
decorative wood finishes. In such cases, glued-
laminated wood is preferred over one-large piece
member for many reasons including: the ease of
manufacturing large structural members from

PANGASINAN STATE UNIVERSITY 7

CE 106 Construction Materials and Testing Module No. 10

standard commercial sized lumber, the opportunity to design large members that vary in cross section
along their length, as required by the application; the specialized design to meet architectural
appeal; the opportunity to use lower grades of wood within the less stressed areas of the member;
and the minimization of checking and other seasoning defects.

Plywood

Plywood is a composite of thin sheets of wood, called plies, that are glued together. The grain
directions of the adjacent plies are at right angles to each other, as shown in the figure. Typically, plies
range in thickness from 1.6mm to 7.9mm.

Classification of plywood is based on the type of wood used (soft or hard species), number and grade
of plies (veneers), and type of adhesive used. Softwood plywood is used for structural applications
such as subflooring and roof decks. Hardwood plywood is used for decorative applications and
furniture. These are graded based on whether an interior or exterior glue is used and on the quality of
the external sheets of veneer.

Particle Board and Strand Board

Lumber and paper production claims wood, such as

small trees and branches, that is not suitable for lumber
products. By gluing together “scraps”, boards can be
produced that have many practical applications.
There are boards produced in 1.2 in x 2.4 in sheets in
thickness ranging from 12.5mm to 28.6mm. Particle
board consists of sawdust-sized particles glued
together in a dense matrix. Strand board is made from
flat chips glued together with a random orientation.

Since strand board uses wood scraps that are less

expensive than the lumber needed to produce
plywood, strand board has replaced plywood in many
applications, such as roof sheathing. As with natural
wood products, glued products can be combined in a
variety of ways to produce structural elements. For
example, I-beams are produced by gluing together 2 x 4 or 2 x 6 elements separated by a strand
board web shown in the figure. Some manufacturers use laminates of plywood instead of dimensional
lumber.

PANGASINAN STATE UNIVERSITY 8

CE 106 Construction Materials and Testing Module No. 10

REFERENCES

Kenneth N. Derucher, et al. Materials for Civil and Highway Engineers, 1994, 3rd Edition,
Prentice Hall International

Moore & Moore, Materials for Engineering, International Edition

Michael S. Mamlouk, Materials for Civil and Construction Engineers

Raymond Higgins, Materials for Engineers and Technicians

PANGASINAN STATE UNIVERSITY 9