Nondestructive Evaluation of Wood Products

The field of nondestructive evaluation (NDE) of materials is constantly evolving. This is especially true in the area of wood and fiber-based materials. A significant effort has been devoted toward the discovery and development of NDE technologies for use with wood-based products. Today, research and technology transfer efforts are underway throughout the world to further the development and use of nondestructive methods to address the many challenges that arise with using forest resources. Efforts are underway that span a broad spectrum of utilization and technology issues from those that focus on the use of previously developed techniques for solving utilization issues with plantation wood to the use of NDE techniques in the assessment of historic artifacts and structures. The objective of this chapter is to provide scientific and technical information on several techniques that are used to nondestructively evaluate wood and wood-based products. This includes near infrared, optical, acoustic, transverse vibration, static bending, proof loading, as well as piezoelectric-based techniques. The techniques presented in this chapter have a solid technical base, with published research findings on their discovery and use dating to the middle of the twentieth century. The underlying science for each technique is presented, followed by a summary of published research findings on its use for nondestructively evaluating wood products.