Traditionally, individual pieces of wood were assigned qualitative ratings by expert "visual graders", based solely on the outward visual appearance. As a piece of wood gets bigger, the chance of a...
Category: Wood Design
Many engineering materials suffer from decreased mechanical properties at elevated temperatures. Aside from the obvious melting problem, even metals that don't rely on heat-treatment processes often...
Wood, like soil, is able to hold varying amounts of moisture within its porous structure. Also like soil, the mechanical properties of wood vary based on the moisture content. Totally separate...
Unlike almost every other engineering material, the strength of a wood structural member depends on the total duration that the member is subjected to the peak expected load. The implications of...
Stone and wood have been used for building since time immemorial, and wood construction is seeing a huge rise in popularity today with the advent of mass timber construction and the increase in...
2x4 and 2x6 walls are regularly used in wood framing to hold up whole buildings, but without sheathing, individual sticks tend to buckle at very low axial loads. Just like a ruler, unbraced 2x...