Effect of different moisture contents on the thermal properties of wood

Abstract

Moisture content is one of the most important properties of wood. The primary purpose of this paper is to examine the dependence between thermal properties and different moisture contents of softwood, hardwood and medium hardwood samples with dimensions of 100 x 100 mm and a thickness of 10 mm (measured using the transient method). Different moisture contents of the wood samples under consideration were achieved by a gradual drying treatment in the laboratory setting. The final results obtained represent the arithmetic means computed from ten sets of measurements. The measured relationship between the thermal conductivity and the mass specific heat of the wood samples was found to indicate an increasing trend, whereas the relationship between the thermal diffusivity and the moisture content of the wood samples showed a non-linear decreasing trend. On the basis of the results obtained, it can be concluded that the thermal properties of wood are greatly affected by the type of wood and changes in the wood moisture content, which mainly depend on wood structure and water conduction in wood.

Keywords

• thermal properties
• moisture
• softwood
• hardwood
• medium hardwood