DETERMINATION OF STIFFNESS AND POISSONS RATIO OF WOOD AIMS OF THE PROJECT The project is aimed at determining the stiffness

and Poissons ratio of wood and to highlight the procedures for obtaining a finite element simulation describing the mechanical, elastic and creep behaviour of the wood sample. OBJECTIVES Due to its structural symmetry, wood is an orthotropic (anisotropic) material in which the properties (such as strength and stiffness) along its grain and in each of the two perpendicular directions are different. Therefore, it requires cost effective method to determine its properties in order to cope with the large number of samples needed to obtain an accurate results. Wood stiffness, or longitudinal modulus of elasticity (EL) is one of the most important wood properties which value can be derived from different methods. In this case, the simple test that will be used for determining the most important wood properties is described as follows; TEST PROCEDURE 1. Place the prepared wood specimen in a Universal testing machine so that loading is parallel to the fibers. Attach two mechanical dial gages as in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Representative scheme of loading One of these gages will give the longitudinal deformation Dy and the other will indicate the lateral deformation Dx. Before attachment, accuracy of the gages are recorded appropriately. 2. Before starting to load the specimen the gages are adjusted to 0 for Py= 0kgf. 3. The load is increased constantly at a specified rate and the values at the gages are recorded at the same time for every Py=5,00E+02 kgf increment. 4. As the load increases, Dy and Dx are read at the same time for every 500 kgf increment until Py=7,00E+03 kgf. 5. another specimen is taken and the steps are repeated from 1 to 5 above except that loading will be perpendicular to fibers and continue up to Py=3,00E+03kgf. TABULATION OF DATA The recorded values are tabulated as follows: Force that is Parallel Perpendicular applied on the Values Values Values Values specimen measured by measured by measured by measured by (kgf) the transverse the axial dial the transverse the axial dial dial gage - x gage - y dial gage x gage - y Stress Calculation The following formula is going to be used for the calculation of stresses acting on the specimen =P/A

 is the stress acting on the specimen, P is the force applied on the specimen, A is the area which the load acts upon, A= Calculating the Deformations In order to compute the deformations on the specimen, the following formulae are going to be used; Dy=yAccuracy of the axial gage D is the axial deformation, y is the value measured by the axial gage, D=2xAccuracy of the transverse gage D is the transverse deformation, x is the value measured by the transverse gage, Therefore, the stress and deformation calculated can be tabulated thus: Stress acting Parallel Perpendicular upon the body Transverse Axial Transverse Axial - (Pa) deformation - deformation - deformation - deformation D (m) D (m) D(m) D (m)

Calculating the Strains In order to compute the strains on the specimen, the following formulae are going to be used; y= , = y is the axial strain , D is the axial deformation, y is a dimension of the specimen y is the transverse strain, D is the transverse deformation, x is a dimension of the specimen, == Calculating Poissons Ratio for Each Stress Value It is known that the Poissons Ratio becomes = is the Poissons Ratio for the specimen, is the transverse strain, is the axial strain. For each stress value. Therefore we would obtain it by dividing each transverse strain value by its corresponding axial strain value. It would then be necessary to take the arithmetic means of these values. The table below shows the results. Stress acting upon Transverse the body - strain - (Pa) Parallel Axial Poissons strain - Ratio - Perpendicular Axial Poissons strain - Ratio -

Transverse strain -

From the values obtained for Poissons ratio in the tables, the arithmetic mean can be calculated for parallel and perpendicular loading and so two values of are calculated. Calculating the Modulus of Elasticity (MOE) In order to find the Modulus of Elasticity of the specimen for both the parallel and perpendicular loadings, parallel and perpendicular , the following formula is going to be used assuming that the specimen is linearly elastic.

=
plot of the stress acting upon the body, against the axial strain, can be used to determine the modulus of elasticity (stiffness) of the wood material assuming the wood is linearly elastic. In this case, MOE is the slope of the linear curve obtained from stress-strain plot. Some of the problems that can induce errors in the test results can be:

 Humidity: Excess moisture can change the mechanical properties of wood, e.g. water molecules entering between the fibers may decrease the modulus of elasticity. Temperature: Increasing temperature may result in a lesser modulus of elasticity. Mechanical Properties: Fibers in the wood may not be perfectly linear or orthogonal as assumed. Apparatus: The dial gages may have different accuracies than expected and result in erroneous results. Calculating the Bulk Modulus and Modulus of Rigidity It is known that the constants Modulus of Elasticity (E) , Poissons Ratio() ,Modulus of Rigidity (), Bulk Modulus () form a linear system where and are the only linearly independent variables. Hence it is possible to derive and from and using the formulae = ; = MODELLING OF MECHANICAL PROPERTIES OF WOOD USING ABAQUS FEM In our case, it will be necessary to use the UMAT subroutine to implement the rheological model of wood, and the DFLUX subroutine to define the flow of moisture on the surface of the wood. The procedures are highlighted as follows: 1. ABAQUS CAE is used to create a model of the wood structure. To achieve this, there is need to define the features of the model in the different fields available in ABAQUS CAE. These include part field to create the structure, property field to specify material properties, create the section and assign the section, assembly field to create part instance of the structure. This is followed by creating step for the load case and then create the field output to specify the output variables desired. Other fields necessary to complete the model of the wood structure are interaction field, load field, mesh field and the job field to submit the model for analysis. The model thus created is used an input file in ABAQUS STANDARD to make the necessary calculations. 2. This process is then proceeded by editing the input file as this will be necessary to create a link between the input file and the subroutines. Some of the key words for definition of materials parameters are *Conductivity, *Density, *Depvar, *Specific heat, *User material. 3. The UMAT Subroutine is then used to access or modify some variables at each time step. These variables include STRESS, DSTRAIN, DTIME, TEMP,PROPS, DTEMP, STATEV and DDSDDE. 4. The DFLUX Subroutine will be called by the solver at each time step in order to calculate the moisture flow on the wood surface. Then, based on the result, the solver will be able to calculate the moisture transfer in the material using the diffusion parameters given in the input file. The following state variables would be used in the moisture transfer calculation; FLUX, SOL and TIME. The moisture diffusion property of wood is given in the input file with the key word *Conductivity. 5. Determination of relative humidity is achieved by reading a text file from the DFLUX Subroutine. In this case, the file has to be opened at each increment of each node. 6. To facilitate convergence of the calculations, there is need to stabilise the analysis and this is done by starting the analysis with a small time step and then increase it, if necessary. or by smoothening of the applied loads, which includes the mechanical loads and the relative humidity. 7. When the input file and the subroutines are created, the calculation is run using a MS-Dos window with MS-Windows System. The command to run the calculation is: ABAQUS job=input_file_name user=Fortran_file_name. CONCLUSION This procedure is useful in determining the interdependency of material parameters of wood in which case, the influence of moisture content, relative humidity and temperature on the mechanical properties of wood under varying loading conditions can be obtained with ease and minimum time. In order to achieve the aims and objectives of this project, adequate time ranging from a week to about a month may be required depending on the type of analysis and the method selected to get the task done.

REFERENCES 1 Young Modulus of Elasticity for Metals and Alloys - Elastic properties and Youngs modulus for common metals and alloys as cast iron, carbon steel and more (http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/young-modulus-d_773.html) 2 Static Measurement of Young's Modulus along Grain (http://www.ukuleles.com/Technology/woodprop.html) 3 Silker, Alan. "Measuring Poisson's ratios in wood." Experimental Mechanics. Volume 12, Number 5, 239-242, DOI: 10.1007/BF02318105 4. Florian M., Stefania F.,Tomi T. 2008. A method to model wood by using ABAQUS finite element software. VTT PUBLICATIONS 687