Abstract
Wood is an anisotropic material, the mechanical properties of which are strongly influenced by its microstructure. In wood, grain compression strength and modulus are the weakest perpendicular to the grain compared to other grain directions. FE (finite element) models have been developed to investigate the mechanical properties of wood under transverse compression. However, almost all existing models were deterministic. Thus, the variations of geometry of the cellular structure were not considered, and the statistical characteristic of the mechanical property was not involved. This study aimed to develop an approach to investigate the compression property of wood in a statistical sense by considering the irregular geometry of wood cells. First, the mechanical properties of wood under radial perpendicular to grain compression was experimentally investigated, then the statistical characteristic of cell geometry was extracted from test data. Finally, the mechanical property of wood was investigated using the finite element method in combination with the Monte Carlo Simulation (MCS) techniques using randomly generated FE models. By parameter sensitivity analysis, it was found that the occurrence of the yield points was caused by the bending or buckling of the earlywood axial tracheid cell wall in the tangential direction. The MCS-based stochastic FE analysis was revealed as an interesting approach for assessing the micro-mechanical performance of wood and in assisting in understanding the mechanical behavior of wood based on its hierarchical structure.
Highlights
Wood exhibits a hierarchical architecture and at all structural levels, it is an anisotropic porous material [1]
The compression strength perpendicular to the grain of black spruce (Picea mariana Mill.) with the radial cell wall was due to the buckling of the radial cell wall
The Monte Carlo Simulation (MCS)-based stochastic FE analysis was revealed as an interesting approach for assessing the micro-mechanical performance of wood and assisting in understanding the behavior of wood based on the hierarchical structure
Summary
Wood exhibits a hierarchical architecture and at all structural levels, it is an anisotropic porous material [1]. As early as 1928, Price [2] investigated the relationship between the anisotropic mechanical properties of wood and its microstructure. The physical and mechanical properties of wood are thought to strongly depend on the material and shape of the cells [3]. Wood is widely used as a structural material. The large deformation ability under compression perpendicular to the grain is exploited by using wood as cushion materials, bottle stoppers, etc. Under perpendicular to grain compression, wood presents a three-stage load-displacement curve [5,6,7], and the corresponding modulus of elasticity and yield strength are rather small. The modulus of elasticity of wood perpendicular the grain is only about 1/30th of what it is parallel to grain properties [22],towhich helps bridge the information of wood in[9]
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