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Fabrication and Analysis of High-Performance Thermochemically Densified Wood

Arulappan Pushparaj, Victor
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=wright162203579660275

Abstract Details

2021, Master of Science in Materials Science and Engineering (MSMSE), Wright State University, Materials Science and Engineering.
While wood construction may be as ancient as humanity itself, wood remains one of the most utilized structural materials because of it’s availability, low cost, durability, surprisingly high specific mechanical properties, and renewability. Recent research into wood-based materials has focused on strategies for enhancing the strength and stiffness of as-grown materials. We fabricated densified wood by thermochemically treating raw white oak wood in Na2SO3 and NaOH solutions, followed by compressing the treated wood at 5MPa at high temperature. Treating the raw wood in NaOH and Na2SO3 cleaves the alpha-O-4 ether bond and beta-O-4 ether bonds, thus dissolving most of the lignin and hemicellulose, which allows the wood cell walls, vessels, and pits to collapse when compressed. This allows the crystalline cellulose microfibril to align themselves adjacent to the neighboring crystalline cellulose, which increases the strength, crystallinity percentage, and crystallite size. The resulting enhanced wood microstructures were characterized using optical and scanning electron microscopy, x-ray diffraction, x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and mechanical testing. Under optimal processing conditions, the thermochemically densified wood exhibited a maximum strength of 350 MPa – 370 MPa, which is 5-fold higher than the raw wood. This process results in a wood material that is comparatively as strong as some structural aluminum alloys and has potential as a future material for high-performance engineering applications.
Henry D. Young, Ph.D. (Advisor)
Ahsan Mian, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Raghavan Srinivasan, Ph.D., P.E. (Committee Member)
113 p.
Materials Science
Compressed Wood; Liquor Solution; Crystallinity Percentage; XPS; SEM; Mechanical Testing

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Citations

  • Arulappan Pushparaj, V. (2021). Fabrication and Analysis of High-Performance Thermochemically Densified Wood [Master's thesis, Wright State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=wright162203579660275

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Arulappan Pushparaj, Victor. Fabrication and Analysis of High-Performance Thermochemically Densified Wood. 2021. Wright State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=wright162203579660275.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Arulappan Pushparaj, Victor. "Fabrication and Analysis of High-Performance Thermochemically Densified Wood." Master's thesis, Wright State University, 2021. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=wright162203579660275

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

wright162203579660275
696
© 2021, some rights reserved.Creative Commons License Fabrication and Analysis of High-Performance Thermochemically Densified Wood by Victor Arulappan Pushparaj is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by Wright State University and OhioLINK.