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CHAPTER Wood as a Structural Material 3 We have long been passionate about wood as an engineering material. This chapter highlights our convic- tions, with supporting data, that wood has a rightful place among engineering materials. References are included to the extensive testing programs we participated in from the late 1970s through the mid-1990s. These test programs characterized the mechanical behavior of Douglas fir veneer/WEST SYSTEM® laminate used in the fabrication of wind turbine blades. The testing, in its narrowest interpretation, provided definitive design and fabrication guidelines for our blade manufacturing business. In its broadest interpreta- tion, the testing sensitized us to the incredible potential for wood as an engineering material. As proponents of wood/epoxy technology, we believe this composite shares all the synergistic qualities of any successful composite technology—the combination is superior to the individual elements. Wood, as one of our oldest engineering materials, carries all the positive feelings that centuries of familiarity with its strength, stiffness, and easy working properties provide, along with the misgivings, equally familiar, of its natural weaknesses. Epoxy in combination with wood accentuates the positive properties and reduces the weaknesses. This book, as originally written, set out an emerging technology that shared many of the traditional uses and choices of wood in boatbuilding. In some areas, we departed from these traditions—we suggest more use of softwoods or less rot-resistant species, and we suggest construction techniques optimized for gluing rather than fastening. Much has changed in the world of wood over the twenty-five years since this book was originally published. The population of the world has increased from 4.3 to 6.3 billion. That increased population has stressed the traditional sources of supply and made environmental consciousness, once an individual choice, now influen- tial in broad areas of public policy around the world. Deforestation, reforestation, national forest products policies, tree plantations, forest monocultures, and biodiversity are important issues that influence the choice, availability, and price of many wood species. At the same time, the general populace has become much less knowledgeable about wood. Boat manufac- turers advertise their products as “wood-free,” ignorant of how to use the material properties of wood to their advantage. This chapter provides a primer on how to consider the fundamental properties of wood as an engineering material, irrespective of species. Wood/epoxy composite construction allows for broad substitution of wood species based on balancing density, strength, and price. You can use less durable woods (if their other mechanical properties are important to you) by addressing the durability issue in a different fashion. Consider how broadly balsa is used in modern boatbuilding—unthinkable forty or fifty years ago. Encapsulated in a properly fabricated plastic composite, balsa has advantageous properties. If you find it difficult to obtain certain kinds of wood, be bold and substitute. But do your homework and make test samples to prove to yourself the viability of these alternative species and how you may introduce them into your project. Some quite extraordinary boats have been built out of non-traditional boatbuilding species.PDF Image | Gougeon Brothers on Boat Construction
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