Abstract
Reaction wood produces very peculiar maturation stresses at the tree periphery, i.e. compressive stress or very high tensile stress, for compression and tension wood, respectively, as compared to moderately high tensile stress for normal wood. This means that both its mechanical state and its mechanical and physical properties differ from normal wood.
Compression wood shows big differences from normal wood in conifers, for all physical and mechanical properties: higher density and axial crushing strength (MOR) but lower modulus of elasticity (MOE), far higher axial (longitudinal) shrinkage but lower radial and tangential shrinkage, sometimes even lower than the axial shrinkage.
For tension wood things are less simple and can vary a lot from hardwood species to species. Globally there are no systematic differences in density and transverse shrinkage; MOE tends to be a little higher while MOR is slightly lower. However, axial shrinkage is much higher for tension wood with a gelatinous layer (G layer) than normal wood due to the specific gel-like organization of matrix in the G layer. For tension wood without a G layer (which is rather frequent) axial shrinkage is around two times higher than in normal wood. This paradoxical shrinkage is thought to originate from the release of maturation stresses during drying.
Overall the very high tensile stress and stored elastic energy in tension wood lead to problems in wood processing (end splitting and board warping), which is far less the case for compression wood. But due to the large difference in properties relative to normal wood, compression wood occurrence is always a big problem for the in service behaviour of timber, which is seldom the case for tension wood.
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Notes
- 1.
Density is defined as the ratio between the mass of a material and its volume. For wood, it has been traditional to use what is called basic density, which is the ratio between oven-dry mass and saturated volume. The latter measurement is chosen because it is easy to determine in practice, since volume measurement is generally made by immersing the wood in water and applying Archimedes’ principle. The comparison in density between normal wood and reaction wood is, however, little affected by the definition used.
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Clair, B., Thibaut, B. (2014). Physical and Mechanical Properties of Reaction Wood. In: Gardiner, B., Barnett, J., Saranpää, P., Gril, J. (eds) The Biology of Reaction Wood. Springer Series in Wood Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-10814-3_6
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