Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

Canada is a major exporter of raw and semi-finished wood products. Unfortunately the quantity of harvestable mature trees has declined considerably in recent years. This situation has been exacerbated by the destruction of large tracts of forests in northern British Columbia due to the mountain pine beetle attack. It would be beneficial to the forestry industry and economy of coastal and northern regions as well as the overall environmental stewardship of the country, if more finished wood products were manufactured and exported without resorting to cutting of Boreal forests. A viable strategy is when structural members for the construction of low-rise residential and commercial buildings are manufactured from small pieces of wood bonded with a synthetic resin under heat and pressure. The proposed project is to aid in the usage of wood composites -value added products- through developing methodologies that enable prediction of the structural response of composite members and their economical design with appropriate safety margins. The proposed methodology is basd on analysis at three material scales, viz, micro-, meso- and macro-mechanics levels. In the micro/meso scale, one evaluates the influence of the heterogeneous distribution of strands and damage susceptibility in these scales. The macroscopic damage is subsequently used to determine damage growth leading to the final failure.