Wood Facade Research Project
Wood is the world’s most sustainable raw building material. The rate of wood degradation is less than the amount of wood produced.
Consequently, wood acts as ‘carbon sink’. Wood is the only building material that is naturally grown by utilising solar energy. Forests play a critical role in the achievement of sustainable development, poverty eradication and internationally agreed development goals. However, like all other natural material wood degradation is associated with chemical changes. Fourier transform infra-red (FTIR) spectroscopy is an efficient tool to characterize chemical changes in wood due to degradation or climate change.
Presently, the European Commission, ISO committees and CIB W-080 task committees are in the process of defining guidelines for service life prediction and CE marking of wood. Specific objective of this inter-disciplinary, multi-institutional project is to generate database and study the scope of utilising FTIR spectroscopy to evaluate properties of wood at molecular level. Broader objective is to use FTIR spectra as databases for modelling and prediction of service life of wood material for industrial use.
Tests have been performed to measure the effect of weathering at accelerated and natural outdoor climate exposures on treated and untreated woods. Results show that FTIR spectral information obtained from treated, untreated and coated wood provides valuable information that can be modelled in future for service life estimation.
Barun Shankar Gupta, ICE Graduate Member in Norway
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