Your search resulted in 244 documents. Displaying 25 entries per page.
Carbon footprint of a cross laminated timber building – Torvbraten school case study
2021 - IRG/WP 21-50366
Torvbråten school is a public school in Asker, Norway, that has reached many sustainability goals. The school was the second in Norway to have Nordic Swan Ecolabel and has a 60 % reduction in carbon footprint compared to the reference benchmark. The building is made of cross laminated timber (CLT) and extensive wood use in general. From a wood protection viewpoint, will this sustainability sustai...
L G F Tellnes, J K Naess, M R Hanssen, P-O Flate
Significance of the thermal design and the sorption isotherm shape in hygroscopic wood moisture dynamics and service life
2022 - IRG/WP 22-20682
Moisture dynamics are considered important for predicting the service performance of wood in exterior applications. Above a critical moisture content, water acts a softener on the structural polymer matrix of the wood cell wall, enabling the necessary diffusion of molecular species involved in the fungal degradation mechanism of wood. Water may enter solid wood in either liquid form or in vapor fo...
W Willems
Using satellite-retrieved soil moisture data to model the decay risk of in-ground timber
2022 - IRG/WP 22-20689
Satellite-derived soil moisture data from the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) was extracted for a 9 x 9 km point grid over Europe. The data was then used as input to a dose-response wood decay model based on terrestrial microcosm (TMC) tests. The resulting hazard map plotted dose as an indicator of in-ground wood decay based on differences in annual temperature and soil moisture characteristic...
P B van Niekerk, M Schönauer, B N Marais, C Brischke
Premature adhesion failure of exterior wood coatings – The influence of substrate temperature at coating application and moisture accumulation during storage
2022 - IRG/WP 22-40937
The present study aimed at extending the knowledge about premature coating failures of industrially finished wood cladding. Two potential factors were studied: the influence of substrate temperature at coating application and moisture accumulation during storage on the adhesion of waterborne coating systems. In the first experiment, 4 batches of wood specimens were submitted to 4 different tempera...
U Hundhausen
Long-term Performance of Treated Timbers in a Sub-tropical Marine Exposure
2023 - IRG/WP 23-11015
The long-term performance of preservative-treated and modified wood in marine exposures was assessed in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. This report describes the final destructive assessment of the surviving Australian panels after 11 years of exposure. This site presents the potential for attack by shipworms (likely Bankia spp.), pholads (Martesia striata), Limnoria and Sphaeroma terebrans. Mos...
E L Galore, J Norton, A Zahora
Simulations of microclimates for wood-decaying fungi in the built environment using environmental analysis
2023 - IRG/WP 23-20703
Simulations of fungal decay risk were run on two similar building geometries exposed to typical annual climate conditions of two different geographical locations, Brunswick (Germany) and Cairns (Australia). The simulations were conducted to capture the effect of wind-driven rain and solar irradiation exposure over nodes of the common building geometry. The moisture content and temperature variatio...
P B van Niekerk, J Niklewski, S H Hosseini, B N Marais, I Frimannslund, T Kringlebotn Thiis, C Brischke
Performance of a noise barrier with different wood materials – results from a service trial after 25 years of exposure
2023 - IRG/WP 23-30776
In connection with the construction of the railway connection between Stockholm Arlanda airport and Stockholm city, an 11 km long noise barrier made of untreated European larch was built along the railway line. This provided an opportunity to implement a full-scale study comparing different untreated wood species and preservative treatments. Thus, in March 1996 ten test sections including untreate...
J Jermer, M Westin
Challenges in managing very long-term field tests
2023 - IRG/WP 23-30779
Field testing of wood preservatives has been on-going in Petawawa, Ontario, Canada since at least 1937. Many of the treated roundwood posts from these early experiments are still in test, and include preservatives still used today, including creosote, copper naphthenate, pentachlorophenol and CCA. Performance data from selected experiments more than 50 years old are reported and we discuss some of...
R Stirling, D Wong
Long-term field performance of a carbon-based preservative in ground contact test conditions
2023 - IRG/WP 23-30781
Carbon-based preservatives have demonstrated reasonable long-term field performance in above ground testing. This study examines the performance of a carbon-based preservative formulation containing quaternary ammonium compounds and tebuconazole as a treatment for three softwood species exposed in ground contact at two sites in Canada. The treatment was associated with improved decay resistance an...
C Wilson, J Zhang, R Stirling
Biological durability and wood-water interactions of sorbitol and citric acid modified wood – Effects on the expected service life
2023 - IRG/WP 23-40960
A high level of research activities on sorbitol and citric acid (SorCA) modified wood has been recognized in Europe over the last few years. As this treatment is close to entering an industrial-scale production, it is of interest to investigate how such treated wood performs upon long-term outdoor exposure. Hence, in this study Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) sapwood was modified with aqueous sol...
K Kurkowiak, L Emmerich, H Militz
Field test methods as long-term aging – report of selective wood properties
2023 - IRG/WP 23-40962
Wood samples from a long-term field test are a valuable compendium of information about the material in the context of its aging processes. In the current work, wood samples from the round-robin test within the ECOMOD project were used as a material for the natural aging process (III and IV class of utility). The research scope was to determine selected properties of this wood which can be partial...
W Perdoch, M Benc, B Mazela, A Szulc, J Cegiela
End-of-life options for engineered wood products / Treated timber in a circular economy
2023 - IRG/WP 23-50383
Australians are excellent consumers of products. These products ultimately end up as waste materials and need to go somewhere. Australia produces around 28 million tons of waste per year with around 50% currently ending up in landfill, including a significant amount of timber, engineered wood products (EWP’s), and preservative treated wood (PTW). Limited landfill capacity, increasing costs, and ...
H Brooke
Utilising novel service life prediction methods for robust and precise Life-Cycle-Costing (LCC)
2023 - IRG/WP 23-50384
Life-Cycle-Costing (LCC) is one of the basic indicators for the assessment of sustainability and cost effectiveness in construction applications. Project WoodLCC was thus conceived to enable LCC through input from models for detailed service life planning of wooden components and buildings. The project is a continuation of the service life planning research conducted in Europe over the last three ...
P B van Niekerk, G Alfredsen, T Kalamees, R Modaresi, A Sandak, J Niklewski, C Brischke
How personality traits influence the perception of fungal decay in a wooden cladding – A survey in three Modelling wood moisture content in outdoor conditions from measured data
2024 - IRG/WP 24-41002
This study examined perceptions of fungal decay damage on wooden cladding across Norway, Sweden, and Germany. The majority of respondents across all countries did not find the fungal decay damage in question acceptable, with the least acceptance in Norway. This could be due to Norway having the highest frequency of wooden residential buildings and the most experience with maintaining wooden claddi...
G W Gustavsen, G Alfredsen, P B van Niekerk, J Niklewski, C Brischke
Modelling the service life of wood in ground contact – Verification of remotely sensed soil data from the reanalysis dataset ERA5-Land using in-situ measurements at a test site of utility poles in Eastern Norway
2024 - IRG/WP 24-41003
This study compared soil moisture and temperature estimates from the 5th European reanalysis (ERA5-Land) dataset with in-situ measurements to assess the accuracy and applicability of ERA5-Land data for modelling the service life of wood in ground contact. The ERA5-Land soil temperature estimates showed a moderate correlation with the in-situ temperature measurements (Spearman’s ρ of 0.73) and a...
U Hundhausen, P B van Niekerk, B Marais
Service life of poplar, a low durability hardwood
2024 - IRG/WP 24-41007
Hybrid poplar is the most common plantation hardwood of the temperate climate zone and is complementary to natural stands of aspen with mainly plantations in Europe and China. Poplar wood has been considered as a valid alternative for many of the construction applications of softwoods especially when considering engineered wood products.
The natural durability of hybrid poplar is low and for a ra...
J Van Acker, X Jiang, L De Ligne, J van den Bulcke
Changes in decay risk of wood in ground contact over Europe, from analysis of historic climate conditions
2024 - IRG/WP 24-41008
Changing climate conditions will affect global temperature and precipitation patterns, shifting some geographical areas into states that are more suitable for fungal wood decay. Climate normals, which are taken over a 30-year period, capture vast spatial and temporal variations in these conditions and comparing these can show changes over time. Importantly, being able to identify locations that ha...
P B van Niekerk, B N Marais, G Alfredsen, C Brischke
Keeping wood greenest: Maximizing the unique benefits of preserved wood through end-of-life planning to realize carbon sequestration and a circular economy
2024 - IRG/WP 24-50387
While competitive fuels and different energy sources are a main driver of current difficulties with using end-of-life wood products for fuel, that is a potentially smaller problem than the rapidly changing carbon footprints of competitive materials, which can potentially be smaller than wood, if the wrong decisions are made at the end of life by users and waste generators. While users have several...
J D Lloyd, B Poe
Determining the minimum water vapor permeability of exterior wood coatings by means of hygrothermal and decay models
2024 - IRG/WP 24-20717
The objective of this study was to determine the minimum water vapor permeability of exterior wood coatings for log homes using hygrothermal and decay modeling. The approach is based on a worst-case scenario assumption, namely a moisture trap at a given wood moisture content in a coated wall log. The minimum limit of vapor permeability of the coating system was determined by simulating the time re...
U Hundhausen, S Ullah, D Kraniotis