Under den gångna vintern har det rasat betydligt fler tak än under någon tidigare snövinter i modern tid. Att döma av de objekt som SP Sveriges Tekniska Forskningsinstitut i Borås hittills hunnit analysera beror takrasen endast i undantagsfall på att det kommit för mycket snö. I stället är det så att snön avslöjar slarv och okunskap.
Blue stain and mold growth on wood can be aesthetically unappealing, but mold growth can also potentially trigger health related issues. In this study, a screening of the effect of selected natural products and derivatives of natural products including essential oils, plant based monomers, and shellfish exoskeleton compounds on the inhibition of blue stain fungi and mold fungi in southern yellow pine veneers and cellulose filter paper. The treatment of the substrates, the weight percent gain of the natural products, and the inhibition effect is presented. The natural products have been investigated previously, but most have not been applied to wood or investigated with regards to blue stain or mold growth. The specimens were treated by dipping, wrapping in foil, and then heating at 105°C for 24h in order to encourage reaction or grafting of the natural products to the wood. A selection of seven additives each exhibited significant protection against blue stain colonization in Petri dish tests and these were studied more in-depth. These included tea tree oil, propyl gallate, hydrogenated gum oil, salicylic acid, cinnamon bark oil, butylene oxide, and furfural. The salicylic acid, tea tree oil, and cinnamon bark oil had the least amount of mold growth after four weeks in the mold chamber test, and have been previously reported to have a mechanism of antifungal activity resulting from their ability to disrupt the fungal cell wall. Propyl gallate veneer was the only specimen that had a lower pH and that would be considered unfavorable to mold growth. While furfural, salicylic acid, and cinnamon bark oil treated veneers all had more hydrophobic surfaces when compared to untreated wood.
A wooden I-stud as a member of a light-frame timber wall is modelled with reducing flange width to simulate fire exposure. The stud is loaded with a vertical load and the effect of restraints from one gypsum board and the top and bottom rail is considered. Geometry and material values are chosen to correspond to a stud with flanges of solid wood and web of OSB (oriented strand board). A model with shell and beam elements is implemented in Abaqus. A buckling analysis is performed on a perfectly straight stud and then a geometrically nonlinear analysis is performed on a stud with an initial curvature. Both the buckling analysis and the geometrically nonlinear analysis show that even a large reduction of the flange width results only in moderate changes of the load-carrying capacity of the structure. In the report diagrams are presented from the geometrically nonlinear analysis where the critical load is easy to read once a failure stress is determined, but an estimate of the the failure stress is not given here.
In lightweight structures it is common to use damping material in junctions to decrease sound transmission. In field measurements, the damping properties of the structure are easily overestimated due to the omnipresent energy losses to the surroundings. Thus, reliable estimates of structural properties cannot be guaranteed. Vibrational tests were done on a full scale wooden construction, consisting of a floor and supporting beams, representing walls, to investigate the effect of different junctions. Totally seven different setups were made using the same building components. In one setup the floor and the walls were screwed together, in five setups different elastomers was positioned between the floor and the walls and in the last setup the floor was resting free on top of the walls. A shaker, with pseudorandom excitation, was used for the excitation of the structure and accelerometers were used for response measurements. The effect of the junction was investigated by studying the acceleration levels in the edge part of the floor-wall junction in different directions. Modal data, extracted from test data using experimental modal analysis, form input and validation data for the following finite element (FE) analysis. Two FE models; modeling one elastomer and the screwed setup, are used for the studies. The aim was to study if the eigenmodes rendering the acceleration levels are similar in test and in analysis, using common material properties. The results from correlation between test and analytical results show that the material properties of the wood need to be known better; more sophisticated models are needed to fully simulate the dynamic behavior of the structure. Anyhow, with the used properties the mode shapes are captured fairly well in the lower frequencies. Furthermore, the experiment shows that the damping properties of the junction material have a major influence on the behavior of the structure.
The main objective of this work was to study the chemical composition of surfaces and ageing effects on acetylated pine (Pinus sylvestris), heat treated spruce (Picea abies), and furfurylated radiata pine (Pinus radiata) in comparison to unmodified wood. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) were the instruments of choice. Observation with a low-vacuum scanning electron microscope (LV-SEM) complemented the study. The spectroscopic information was also linked to a parallel wettability study on matched wood samples by the Wilhelmy method. The results show that XPS and ToF-SIMS are two powerful tools that in combination give complementary information, both quantitative and qualitative, and are well suited for observation of the ageing process of different wood surfaces. The hydrophobization process as a result of migration of extractives during ageing was well quantified by the XPS measurements and the results correlated well with wetting results. Several specific hydrophobic substances could be identified by ToF-SIMS measurements.
The main objective of this work was to apply contact angle analysis to predict work of adhesion (Wa) between some modified wood materials and certain thermoplastics and adhesives. Wetting properties, i.e., contact angles, were measured by the Wilhelmy method on both freshly prepared and aged veneer samples of unmodified and acetylated Scots pine, furfurylated radiata pine, and heat treated Norway spruce. The sessile drop method was used to measure contact angles on a phenol resorcinol formaldehyde, an emulsion polymer isocyanate, and a one-component polyurethane adhesive. Contact angle data were also collected from the literature on polyethylene, polyvinyl chloride, polymethyl methacrylate, polystyrene, and Nylon 6. Contact angle analysis based on the Chang-Qin-Chen model was then applied to determine so-called acid-base interaction parameters and Wa between the wood samples and the selected thermoplastics and adhesives. Results show that the ageing process led to an increased hydrophobic character of unmodified, heat treated, and furfurylated wood samples. The freshly prepared acetylated wood samples had a pronounced hydrophobic character which remained approximately constant after ageing. The predicted Wa between the wood and the adhesives was considerably higher than that between the wood and the thermoplastics. Furthermore, the predicted Wa between the acetylated wood and both the thermoplastics and water was approximately unchanged when comparing the fresh and aged samples. In contrast, the ageing of all other wood samples resulted in a dramatic decrease of the wood-water Wa and a moderate decrease of the wood-thermoplastics Wa. The wood-adhesives Wa, however, was unchanged for the unmodified and furfurylated wood when comparing the fresh and aged samples and even increased for heat treated and acetylated wood samples.
Kallsner and Girhammar have developed a new plastic design method for wood-frame shear walls at ultimate limit state. The method is capable of calculating the load-carrying capacity of partially anchored shear walls, where the leading stud is not necessarily anchored against uplift. In fully anchored shear walls, the leading stud needs to be anchored using some kind of hold-downs to resist uplift and the bottom rail needs to be fixed by anchor bolts to resist horizontal shear forces. In partially anchored shear walls, where hold-downs are not provided, the uplifting force is resisted by the sheathing-to-framing joints along the bottom rail. Hence, it is important that the bottom rail is anchored to the floor structure or foundation by anchor bolts and, therefore, able to transmit the forces to the structure below. Because of the eccentric load transfer, transverse bending is developed in the bottom rail and splitting of the bottom rail can occur. In order to use the plastic design method, a ductile behaviour of the sheathing-to-framing joints must be ensured. In this paper, results of tests on the splitting capacity of the bottom rail due to uplift in partially anchored shear walls are presented. Specimens with single-sided sheathing were tested, varying the size of washer, pith orientation of the bottom rails and anchor bolt position along the width of the bottom rail. The aim of the tests was to evaluate the influence of these parameters in order to avoid splitting failure of the bottom rail. Two types of brittle failure modes occurred during testing: (1) a crack opening from the bottom surface of the bottom rail and (2) a crack opening from the edge surface of the bottom rail along the line of sheathing-to-framing joints. These failure modes were mainly dependent on the washer size and the location of the anchor bolt. The results show that the distance between the edge of the washer and the loaded edge of the bottom rail has a decisive influence on the maximum load and the failure modes of the bottom rail.
Kallsner and Girhammar have developed plastic design methods for light-frame timber shear walls that can be used for determining the load-carrying capacity when the shear walls are partially anchored. For such walls, the leading stud is not fully anchored against uplift and tying down forces are developed in the sheathing-to-framing joints. Since the forces in the anchor bolts and the sheathing-to-framing joints do not act in the same vertical plane, the bottom rail will be subjected to cross-wise bending, leading to possible splitting along the bottom side of the rail. Another possible brittle failure mode is splitting along the edge of the bottom rail in line with the sheathing-to-framing fasteners. An experimental program has been conducted using different anchor bolt locations, washer sizes and pith orientations. A fracture mechanics approach for the two failure modes is used to evaluate the experimental results. The comparison shows a good agreement between the experimental and analytical results. The failure mode is largely dependent on the distance between the edge of the washer and the edge of the bottom rail. The size of the washer seems also to have some influence on the failure load. The fracture mechanics models seem to capture the essential behaviour of the splitting modes and to include the decisive parameters. These parameters can easily be adjusted to experimental results and be used in design equations for bottom rails in partially anchored shear walls.
The authors present an experimental study of a suspended floor element connection (sheet steel hangers) employed in the Masonite Flexible Building (MFB) system. The hangers are mounted with screws and are pre-attached to the floor elements at manufacturing. This arrangement makes the design of the hanger critical with respect to safety and load transfer redundancy, since the screws transfer all the loads, both withdrawal and shear forces can act simultaneously. Tests have been carried out to examine the structural behaviour of the hanger. The two most critical load cases, vertical floor load and horizontal wind suction load, and three different screw joint configurations were investigated. The results indicate that the vertical distance between the screw joint and the upper edge of the rim beam should be increased and that withdrawal forces on the screws should be kept as low as possible. Some suggestions for improving the present design are given and a modified design is proposed to enhance the load-bearing capacity and to improve the overall safety and redundancy.
The Masonite Flexible Building (MFB) system is a complete timber building system for commercial and residential multi-storey houses. The system is subdivided into two market variants; XL and Light. The XL version is for tall and large buildings with long floor spans while the Light version is adapted for smaller buildings with lower loads. Though differing in technical performance, the functional criteria arc the same for both variants. The MFB system uses prefabricated wall, floor and roof elements which are delivered in flat packages and erected on the construction site. The MFB system might be classified as a panel construction, where the load-carrying structure consists of composite light-weight timber I-beams mechanically integrated with a composite laminated wood panel called PlyBoard™. The I-beams and the panel form a strong and rigid carcass for wall and floor elements, making the system well suited for high rise construction. A key feature of the MFB system is the connection technique which enables swift erection of the system units on site. The plyboard panels are provided with a continuous slot along the periphery. The slot is used as a general connection interface for the joining of the wall elements. The floor elements are suspended and hooked onto the bearing walls using sheet steel hangers, allowing swift assembling of the floor deck and enabling direct vertical wall-to-wall load transfer parallel to grain. The paper presents the construction principles, system components and units, erection technique and functional and architectural aspects of the Masonite Building System.
Modified wood is commercially available and merchandized as a new, environmentally friendly and durable wood species. However, there are no standards focusing on the evaluation of modified wood. Combining resistance against fungal decay and good ecotoxicological properties may be a start. In this study softwood and hardwood species were furfurylated using different treatment processes and treating solutions. The durability was determined by exposing the treated wood to a range of Basidiomycetes and the ecotoxicity was studied on two aquatic organisms. It was the purpose to come to a strategy and how to unite efficacy and ecotoxicity, since this is important in product development. The results show that the selection of fungus used for mass loss determination and the choice of ecotoxicity method is decisive, confirming that a combination of methods is valuable. A tiered approach to find the optimal treatment seems the best option. First, adequate protection against wood-rotting fungi should be attained, followed by ecotoxicity evaluation of the wood leachates. If necessary, the optimization process should be repeated until both durability and ecotoxicity are within satisfactory limits. This process could be extended with other evaluation criteria, e.g. dimensional stability of the modified wood or a risk analysis of its leachate.
The interaction between moisture and the macromolecular wood tissue is of critical importance to wood properties. In this context, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is very promising as this method could deliver molecular information on the submillimeter scale (i.e., along concentration gradients) about both free and adsorbed water and the cell wall polymers. In the present study, it is demonstrated for the first time that wood containing adsorbed heavy water (2H2O) can be studied by MRI based on separated images due to water (2H MRI) and cell wall polymers (1H MRI). Data confirm that in specimens equilibrated at controlled humidity there is a direct correlation between bound water content and relative density of the polymers in wood tissue; there is a strong variation across annual rings.
Missfärgande svampar på impregnerat virke upplevs som ett växande problem inom impregneringsindustrin. Förutsättningarna för etablering av svampar är hög fuktkvot/luftfuktighet och rätt temperatur, men omfattningen av påväxt kan variera beroende på ett antal andra faktorer såsom träslag, att virket är infekterat innan det används, hög sporhalt i omgivande miljö, träskyddsmedel och eventuell ytbehandling. I detta infoblad följer några tips om hur man kan minimera risken för uppkomst av missfärgande svampar.