Objective
A.Background
Wood research is considered to be important and essential for Europe for three main reasons:
-with the accession of Austria, Finland and Sweden to the European Union, Europe became a considerable forest-power and wood-consumer (280 Mm3/year - round wood equivalent -, self sufficiency: 88%),
-the limitation of the raw materials and energy resources in the world demands an optimized and sustained utilization of the renewable raw material wood,
-in competition with other widely diffused materials more and more basic knowledge is required.
Mechanical performance of wood and wood products is one of the first priorities for wood research: it is necessary to understand the behaviour of wood and wood products in their environment in relation to their internal structure at different levels of investigation:
chemical/ultrastructure/cell wall/particle interface (for panels)/macrostructure (for timber).
Analysis tools which exist in the field of material mechanical sciences (see composite materials, concrete, etc.) have to be adapted and validated on wood and wood products:
physical chemistry/micromechanics/heat and mass transport/fracture analysis/rheology/acoustics/structural analysis.
Observation tools already exist and are more or less usually applied to wood and wood products:
microscopy/ultramicroscopy/NDT/mechanical testing.
Research in the field of wood mechanics (or wood sciences) is essentially financed by public money because the wood industry in principle consists of SMEs which are not able to spend a larger amount of money on research: the institution of a network of laboratories involved in this field generates a considerable benefit for the different European governments.
COST Action 508 (Wood Mechanics) was successful and is considered as a model by Japan, North America, Pacific countries: six years after its creation, the broad field of wood mechanics has been reviewed by delegates of 17 countries through five workshops (keywords: creep - fracture - plasticity/damage - service life - panel products) and will be covered by a general conference in May 1996. Good cooperation between institutions and men, fruitful discussions and visits to laboratories have contributed to a really efficient scientific networking. Since other international networks (RILEM, IUFRO, CIB) allow regular meetings devoted to applications of wood mechanics (timber engineering, drying, non-destructive evaluation, etc.), since a recent COST Action is working on semi-rigid behaviour of timber engineering structural connections - C1 - and a new COST Action will be launched for timber frame building systems, it is time now to focus the activity of a new Action on basic aspects of wood mechanics.
B.Objectives and benefits
The main objective of the Action is to produce scientific arguments for demonstrating that wood is a modern material for engineering, that wooden products can be designed with safety, that their mechanical performance can be predicted and wooden structures can be modelled with sound reliability.
The following are the expected benefits, for the scientific community, from this COST Action:
-information on national research programmes and possibilities,
-effective and rapid sharing of research results,
-initiation of collaborative European research programmes,
-development of interdisciplinary research activities.
For the economic and technical benefits, the following are expected:
-a good transfer of knowledge from this Action to other Actions in the field of wood industry and timber engineering,
-improvement of processes (such as drying, pulping or manufacture of wood-based materials),
-improvement of design methods (wood-based materials, wooden structures, timber engineering),
-diffusion and improvement of methods for non-destructive evaluation of mechanical performance of wood and wood products,
-opening of new markets for European timber resources, added value through better designs and processes.
C.Scientific programme
Type of activities
To achieve the objectives, the following activities are offered:
-organization of annual workshops, seminars, visits of laboratories,
-the drawing up of state of the art reports and/or studies,
-exchange of research workers and Ph.D. students through short-term scientific missions or other methods,
-exchange of publications and documentation, of activity reports,
-short-term exchange of information via INTERNET networking.
Scientific areas
Much work has been accomplished in developing basic models and understanding of wood behaviour. However, there are specific areas where vital knowledge is deficient and for which European scientific cooperation is specially needed which involves new partnerships compared to Action 508:
1.Fundamentals of physical and mechanical wood-water relations: water absorption, moisture transport, mechanosorptive phenomena (swelling/shrinkage + creep), effects of impregnating products. The main result of COST Action 508 is that mechanical performance of wood and wood products is strongly related to these wood-water relations.
2.Micro-mechanical explanation and prediction of mechanical performance of wood and wood products (deformations: elastic, creep, swelling/shrinkage - fracture - plasticity - damage/fatigue).
3.Improved understanding of interfaces: wood products, as opposed to solid wood, are governed as much by interfaces as by the properties of the wood itself. Thus, the correct description, management and behaviour of the interface are of prime importance:
panels products (fibre-particule-strand-ply-board) involve wood/glue/wood interfaces,
joints (all types) involve wood/(metal, wood, polymer)/wood interfaces,
wood variants involve mature/juvenile/reaction wood "interphases".
4.Damage accumulation: damage sources identification (acoustic emission, microscopy, mechanical testing), damage quantification, accumulation of mechanical and environmental damage, accumulation of different mechanical damage (fatigue + creep).
5.Non-standard conditions: hitherto rheological investigation has been particularly limited to a general set of conditions (temperature, humidity, time) corresponding to specific industrial applications (natural drying + timber engineering); investigations have to be extended to green wood, low and high temperatures, high and ultra low deformation rates, special environments, for new applications (mechanics of standing trees, high temperature drying, dynamic actions, etc.).
6.Coupled thermo-hygro-mechanical constitutive laws have to be developed (1D to 3D) with a view to improving computational models and progressively complementing mechanical testing by numerical testing. Use of predictive models and explanations are also required for non-standard conditions (5) and damage accumulation (4).
D.Timetable and organization
Comments:
6 months before Workshop Wi, the Management Committee appoints an organization committee, called working group wgi, for this Workshop.
Organization, Management and Responsibilities
There is no plan to organize separate permanent working groups.
The Management Committee will meet every 6 months to glean information on what is going on in the different countries, in Europe or on the world scale in the scientific field of the Action or in neighbouring fields (other COST Actions), to initiate cooperative programmes through state of the art or studies, to manage consistent short-term scientific missions and to set up an efficient ETERNET network.
The role of the national delegates is to report to the Management Committee what is going on in their national laboratories or institutes and to circulate in them the decisions or proposals of the committee.
The role of the Scientific Secretary is essential: it is necessary to appoint somebody who has enough time to take on this task.
Special attention will be devoted to intermediate (end of the second year) and final reports on activity and evaluations: internal evaluation and external evaluation by a panel of experts.
E.Economic dimension
On the basis of national estimates provided by representatives of different countries, and taking into account the coordination costs to be covered by the COST budget of the European Commission, the annual overall cost of the activities to be carried out under the Action has been estimated, at 1995 prices, at roughly ECU 6 million.
Current status
The Management Committee is chaired by Mr. Pierre Morlier (F) with Mr. Tomi Toratti (FIN) as vice chair.
The first Workshop will be held in Copenhagen (DK) in June 1997 and will focus on Wood/water relations, including basic issues such as sorption, moisture transport, and shrinking and swelling, as well as the application to wood mechanics.
Programme(s)
Topic(s)
Call for proposal
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1049 Brussels
Belgium