Karami Elham, Bardet Sandrine, Matsuo Miyuki, Gaff Milan, Brémaud Iris and Gril Joseph
Effects of mild hygrothermal treatment on the physical and vibrational properties of spruce wood .
Composite Structures, 2020, 253, pp.112736
Abstract: Spruce wood specimens were treated under mild temperatures 130°C and 150°C and different relative humidity from 0% to 25%. EMC reduced significantly for all the treatments. Weight loss (WL) increased insignificantly while the colour parameter, L*, decreased dramatically. Tanδ reduced significantly while the E/d has increased. After reconditioning, the partially reversibility has been achieved for EMC, tanδ and E/d. But, still an irreversible changes remains, which suggested being due to the chemical changes in wood polymers. While reversible changes has been resulted from the annealing of amorphous polymers. Since, the mild hygrothermal treatment applied to the specimens coincided with no significant WL, there was no obvious damage in wood structure while the irreversible changes present an improvement in vibrational properties by decrease in damping (tanδ), which could be due to the intermediate relative humidity of the treatment.
Keywords: mild treatments, weight loss, colour parameter, reversible effects, reconditioning, damping .
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