WOOD RESEARCH Volume 64, Number 4, 2019
Shaoxiang Cai, Shouheng Hu, Yanjun Li, Xinzhou Wang, Lican Chen, and Jun Li

Nanomechanical behavior of wood cell walls observed by different indentation loading prerequisites

The variations of nanomechanical behavior of wood cell walls under different peak loads, loading times, and holding times were studied. Samples were separately loaded to preset peak loads of 100, 150, 200, 250 and 300 μN. Changes in the micromechanical properties were tracked in the longitudinal direction to determine change values of the elastic modulus and hardness. Moreover, the creep behavior was also analyzed under different holding times. It was found that the longer the holding time, the larger the creep ratio of all of the samples, and the creep rate decreased slowly with longer loading times. Finally, when the peak load was larger, the displacement rate and strain rate increased, but the strain rate in each test exhibited a tendency to become constant after 10 s.

WOOD RESEARCH Volume 66, Number 1, 2021
WENGANG HU and Bingrui Chen

Experimental and numerical studies on mechanical behaviors of beech wood under compressive and tensile states

Effect of loading type (compression and tension) on mechanical properties, including elastic constants, yield strength and ultimate strength of beech (Fagus orientalis) wood were studied based on experimental and numerical methods. The mechanical behaviors of beech wood in compressive and tensile states were simulated by finite element method (FEM) using mechanical parameters measured in an experiment. The results showed that the effect of loading types on mechanical properties of beech was statistically significant. The elastic moduli measured in tension were all bigger than those in compression, but the Poisson’s ratios determined in compression were bigger than those in tension. In compressive state, the yield and ultimate strengths of beech in longitudinal grain orientation were all smaller than those measured in tensile state, while the yield and ultimate strengths of beech in radial and tangential directions were higher than those of longitudinal direction. The results of the FEM in compression and tension were all well consistent with those measured by experiments respectively, and the average errors were all within 13.69%. As a result, the finite element models proposed in this study can predict the mechanical behaviors of wood in tensile and compressive states.