USANS study of wood structure

Abstract

Wood performs a vascular and structural function in trees. In this study we used the double-crystal diffractometer BT5 at the NIST Center for Neutron Scattering (Gaithersburg, USA) to study the pore structure inside wood sections. The slit-smeared intensity of scattered neutrons was measured from wood sections in directions parallel, orthogonal and transverse to the tree's trunk axis over a scattering vector range 0.00004–0.002 Å −1. The interpretation of the data in terms of a reductionist model consisting of infinitely long cylinders (cell lumens) is discussed.