Specific Heat Capacity of Wood

Abstract

Specifi c heat capacity is defi ned as the amount of heat that a kilogram of a given substance is required to absorb in order to increase its temperature by one degree. The temperature of a given substance can change either at constant pressure or at constant volume, so we differentiate between specifi c heat capacity at constant pressure (cp) and specifi c heat capacity at constant volume (cv). When doing research into the heat propertiesof wood, the quantity that most frequently remains constant is pressure, thus restricting our study on specifi c heat capacity to cp. This paper provides an overview of the research that has so far been carried out into the specifi c heat capacity of wood depending on the temperature and moisture content. An analytical and graphical comparison has been performed of the results published in the Wood Industry Manual (1967) (DIP), Wood Handbook (1999) (WH) and work published by Deliiski (2012) (DEL).

Keywords

• specifi c heat capacity
• wood
• moisture content
• temperature