Recent Progress Toward An Understanding of the Physical and Mechanical Properties of Wood

This review surveys briefly some of the developments and progress made during the past 5 years in striving toward a better understanding of the physical and mechanical properties of wood, their significance, and their interrelationship. References (356 citations) are restricted to work done in the United States or Canada on woods native to those countries. Studies of the interrelationship between growth conditions, wood structure, and wood properties should continue to develop information that is significant to both forest management and forest utilization as quality of the finished product becomes at least as important as quantity of production. As demands for more efficient use of wood increase, so will demands for methods of nondestructive evaluation of the particular properties of wood that are most important for various end uses. This indicates further emphasis on the growing need for means of nondestructive evaluation at a level of accuracy consistent with use requirements. It also indicates the need for a sounder basic understanding of the physical and mechanical behavior of wood under a wide variety of conditions and the effects of treatments and conditions of use on such behavior.

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