Innovative engineered wood products made from Thermo-hydro-mechanical densified wood with enhanced physical, mechanical and fire performance (WoDeFi)

Wood as an engineering material in a wide range of applications, from house construction to commercial buildings, furniture, joinery, and other industrial products. Its use is closely linked to the human living environment. The materials incorporated must be safe for human health and property. Fire safety is fundamental, as the absence of fire safety can endanger life and cause significant damage to property. In general, research on engineered wood focuses on the quality of mechanical-physical properties, jointing and surface finishing, which are also related to the safety of living. However, less research is carried out in material fire safety. The project proposes new products developing with improved fire and mechanical-physical properties. Different materials will be added to the wood, and it will be treated in different ways to change its structure and properties. The new material could be used in environments with increased fire risk and would have an impact on the added value of wood. The project is divided into two sections. In the first section, we will investigate, develop, test, characterize and evaluate new processes and sample materials on a small scale. The materials with the best assessment of mechanical-physical and fire performance will be identified. In second section, the selected materials will be incorporated into engineered wood of larger dimensions and tested. At the end of the project, a material with excellent fire and mechanical-physical properties, predicted environmental impact and predicted added value will be selected. The specific objective of the project are: Identifying and selecting wood modification procedure to combine with thermo-hydro-mechanical (THM) densification; Design of experiment on selected densification and modification procedure; Manufacture small size modified wood samples; Perform and study mechanical, physical, thermal, leaching resistance test, and processability of modified wood; Perform tests under the cone calorimeter with small modified samples; Study the ignition behavior of the samples to define the critical heat flux; Study the burning behavior of the samples to derive several properties; Study the charring behavior of the samples to derive the charring rate; Establish predictions with numerical or semi-empirical approaches; Find out optimized process parameters for thermo-hydro-mechanical (THM) densification; Implementation of the small-scale wood modification process to a large-scale process of an engineered wood; Test the mechanical properties of the engineered wood product made from modified wood; Perform SBI tests (EN 13823) on large samples to determine the fire classification (EN 13501:1); Prepare and built a mid-scale rig that can allocate the large samples; Perform fire spread to look at the works case scenario.