Wood properties are highly dependent on moisture. As a fact, undetected excessive moisture can lead to structural damage and decay. Nowadays, monitoring moisture in wood buildings is not a common practice, which exposes wood to a latent risk of failure compare to other materials less affected by moisture but emitting more CO2. That is why we need solutions to implement monitoring more efficiently. Most of the current wooden buildings are made of engineered wood products. Can we use the bondlines within them to detect moisture in situ?
Figuratively speaking, wood is a communicative material, as it changes its properties due to external influencing factors such as ambient moisture content – we just need to sense its signals. To understand wood signals, we need a translator. Our translators: resistance meters and impedance spectrometers which detect changes in electrical properties that indicate fluctuations in wood moisture content. First things first, we need an adhesive which can conduct electricity. To achieve this, we can use electrically conductive fillers to disperse them into the adhesive. We used two carbon-based fillers, carbon black and graphene nanoplatelets, which differ in structure and size and therefore induce different properties. We then analysed the electrical properties via direct current (DC) and alternating current (AC) measurements of the adhesive bondlines at various wood moisture contents to see the influence of the adhesive composition on the detection of moisture in wood.
The interdisciplinary constitution of our team, from material to wood and adhesives scientists and physicists helps us to investigate the different components of the composite we study. Our research is driven by environmental concerns and aims to enhance safety, durability and sustainability in the construction industry.
Keywords: electrical properties, wood moisture, conductive adhesive, monitoring, engineered wood
Authors
Sarah Suarez
BOKU University, Institute of Wood Technology and Renewable Materials, Austria
Maja Vasiljevic
BOKU University, Institute of Physics and Materials Science, Austria
Johannes Konnerth
BOKU University, Institute of Wood Technology and Renewable Materials, Austria
Martin Riegler
Wood K plus – Competence Centre for Wood Composites and Wood Chemistry, Austria
Anita Tran
BOKU University, Institute of Wood Technology and Renewable Materials, Austria
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