OPTIMISATION OF HARDWOOD DRYING SCHEDULES ALLOWING FOR BIOLOGICAL VARIABILITY

ABSTRACT

The amount of biological variability in timber creates considerable problems in producing timber of adequate and reproducible quality with a predictable amount of variability in final moisture contents. The development of optimised drying schedules for addressing these problems is therefore desirable. Previous methods (largely of a stochastic type) are reviewed in this work and their limitations assessed. The physical parameters which have the greatest impact on the stress levels (and hence quality) of the timber have been assessed using a diffusion model for the drying of Australian hardwood timber. This deterministic model is then used, together with statistical methods for quantifying the confidence regions for the variability in the physical parameters with the greatest impact, in a systematic technique to develop a new optimised schedule for grey ironbark timber (Eucalyptus paniculaia). This new schedule is then compared with a previous optimised schedule, which did not take this variability into account. The productivity (amount of good quality timber divided by drying time) appears to be maximised when the schedule is such that 90% of the timber produced is good quality.

Key Words and Phrases:

• Monte-Carlo
• Markov Method
• Statistical Analysis
• Trade offs