Project Description
Project Overview: Wood is a hierarchical material with numerous structural features. Conditions like heat treatment and water content can greatly influence the mechanical behavior of wood. Studying how embrittlement, fungal decay from humidity, or how different types of wood perform under a strain is valuable to the commercial industry, as well as to the USDA’s Forest Products Laboratory. The team will conduct design of experiments using a type of torsion pendulum to measure the free oscillation of wood under various treatments with the aid of visual tracking (slow motion camera). With image analysis and mathematical tools, the data collected will be used to calculate the damping frequency and shear modulus of each wood sample. The team will perform SEM and/or optical microscopy of a variety of wood samples in order to better interpret the experimental results.
Client: Dr. Joseph Jakes, Forest Products Laboratories, Madison, Wisconsin
Student Team: Andrew DeRuiter, Noah Anderson, Danielle Gross, Ana Diges, and Joe Knoelke
