Moisture plays a key role in the enzymatic degradation of wood by decay fungi. Therefore, automated moisture content (MC) monitoring provides valuable information about the moisture-induced risk of decay and can serve as an early warning system before decay occurs. The most common systems for this purpose are based on measuring the electrical resistance of wood. The electrical resistance is dependent on wood MC, but also on temperature, wood species, electrode configuration, and the number and mobility of ions in wood. Therefore, material-specific resistance characteristics are needed to reliably interpret the resistance data and final MC measurements. Fungal decay itself can have a threefold effect on resistance –based MC measurements: 1.) Metabolization of cell wall substance usually comes along with a change of the sorption properties, 2.) Decay fungi potentially change the electrical conductivity of wood due to translocation of ions and enhancing their mobility, and 3.) Fungi are actively transporting water to the location of enzymatic activity. All these mechanisms are not necessarily rectified, might interfere with each other and are likely dependent on the different rot types. The aim of this study was therefore to systematically examine the effect of brown and white rot decay on the sorptive and electrical properties of soft- and hardwood.
Keywords: fungal decay, moisture content, sorption
Authors
Christian Brischke
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany
Simon Stricker
Linda Meyer-Veltrup
Lukas Emmerich
Login to download the PDF