Selected physical and mechanical properties of the Chilean wood species roble, lingue, manio and alerce

Abstract

Data sets with mechanical and physical properties of wood species can aid the recognition of biomechanical correlations, and they can also be valuable tools to assist decision making regarding the practical industrial employment of the species. However, such data sets are still lacking for many species, particularly non-European and non-North-American species. Therefore, the goal of this study was to determine the mechanical properties of four Chilean species (the softwoods alerce and manio, and the hardwoods lingue and roble), including the three Young's moduli and the three shear moduli. Dynamic methods were applied as well as static ones. The results suggest that Brinell hardness, compression strength and Young's moduli are clearly correlated with the density and can partly be related to anatomical details. Since the investigated species cover only a fraction of the Chilean species that are suitable for construction purposes, for example, further future examination of relevant species would be beneficial for basic research and industry.

Keywords:

• Alerce
• Chilean wood species
• lingue
• manio
• mechanical properties
• modulus of elasticity
• roble

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the contributions of Stéphane Croptier for preparing the SEM specimens and Gabriele Peschke for operating the SEM. Both are members of the Institute for Building Materials at ETH Zurich.