This paper presents a new simple method to evaluate wood and wood products for their resistance to swelling and to assess wood preservatives for their ability to dimensionally stabilize treated wood exposed to water. Permeable wood of various dimensions and treated with different preserving chemicals have been measured for swelling in the radial and tangential direction during immersion in liquid water. The results indicate that a simple exponential function describing the dimension of the samples during immersion can be used to evaluate both the water-repellency and anti-swelling effectiveness of wood preserving chemicals. The results can be achieved in reasonable time, and the parameters of the function can be determined by a commercial desk-top computer program.

Download document (544 kb)
free for the members of IRG. Available if purchased.

Purchase this document