A practical method to evaluate the dimensional stability of wood and wood products

This paper presents a new, simple method to evaluate wood and wood products for their resistance to swelling, and to assess wood preservatives for their ability to dimensionally stabilize treated wood exposed to water. To explore the practicability of the method, permeable wood of various dimensions treated with different preserving chemicals were measured for swelling in the radial and tangential direction during immersion in liquid water. The results indicate that a simple exponential equation describing the dimensions of the samples during immersion can be used to evaluate both the water-repellent and anti-swelling effectiveness of wood-preserving chemicals. The results can be achieved in reasonable time, and the parameters of the equation can be determined by a commercial desktop computer program.

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