Chapter 6

Timber Prepared by
M. K. Chandrasekar

Furniture, plywood, Indoor work only,

doors, windows.
(Xmas trees) By Thomas Bezabihm HU IoT, CEng
low cost furniture 1
Timber
 One of the basic materials of construction since

the earliest days of humankind

 Today it has been largely outdated by concrete

and steel. However, the use of timber remains

quite extensive.
 Different species of tree exist and one variety of

trees might make a better building product

than another.

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 Therefore, the engineer should have some
knowledge of the classification of trees, their
growth and structural ability, to understand the
physical and mechanical properties.

Classes of trees
Exogens and Endogens
 Botanists classify trees into two main categories:

Exogens and Endogens. These terms refer to the

pattern of growth of particular species.
 Exogenous trees:- grow diametrically, by adding

new cells in a layer between the existing wood

and the bark. Almost all wood of commercial use
falls in this category.
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 The exogenous growth pattern - transverse
section with concentric annual rings -
correspond to each year’s growth.
 At the center of cross-section of tree is pith, a
dark area of small diameter that does not
increase in size after the first year of growth.
 Encircling the outermost annual ring is a layer
of microscopic thickness called the cambium
ring, and it is here that new growth is formed.
 The outer most layer is known as bark.

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5
Tree Ring
As a tree grows, cells inside the trunk die. Each year new cells grow
around the dead cells, forming a ring in the tree trunk. When a tree
dies, you can tell its age by cutting through the trunk and counting
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 Endogenous: trees add new living fiber to the
old by allowing new fiber to intermingle with
the old, thus producing growth both
diametrically and longitudinally.
 Most endogenous are fairly small plants, such
as corn, sugar cane, palm, and bamboo. The latter
two plants are used extensively as a structural
material.

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Hardwoods and Softwoods
• Exogenous trees further classified as hardwoods
and softwoods.
• These are some what misleading terms, because
they indicate not the quality of the wood but to
the type of tree the wood comes from.
• Hardwoods comprise the broad-leafed trees,
mostly deciduous, slow growing, forming
heavy and hard wood that is used more
extensively for furniture, interior finishing, and
cabinetwork than for structural purposes.
• Softwoods are the conifers trees.
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Loblolly Pine
The loblolly pine is the species most frequently grown for
timber production in the southeastern United States. Its
wood is fragrant and resinous and has a wide range of
uses, such as for building material, pulpwood, and fuel.
The name loblolly means "large mud puddle" in Native
American dialect, referring to the fact that loblolly pines 9
Wood structure
 Qualities of wood for use as a building material

arise from the structure of wood.

 Wood is formed mostly of filamentous cells.

 Perforated pits in the cells make possible the

flow of sap between cells.

 Wood cells are composed of the polymer

cellulose and hemicelluloses which are cemented

together by a third polymer, lignin.
 Wood is typically 50 to 60 percent cellulose

material and 20 to 35 percent lignin, with small

amounts of other carboxydrates, such as resin
and gum.
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 It is the cellulose that gives wood its axial
strength and elastic properties, and the lignin
that is responsible for its compressive strength.
 The carboxydrates, although indigestible by
man, are a favorite food for some other forms
of life, such as termites, and measures much
often be taken to protect wooden structure
from these species.
 Over a period of several years the wood ceases
to function as part of the living tree and has
only structural value for the tree.

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 The living part is called sapwood: the older
wood is heartwood.
 Heartwood is easily distinguished from
sapwood because it is darker in color.
 It is more highly valued because it is more
resistant to decay than sapwood, although the
strength of each is about the same.

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Season of cutting
 The first step in the manufacturing process of

lumber is to select and fell the trees. This is

normally done in winter when the flow of sap is
minimal and destructive fungi and insect are
least active.
 The logs are cut into standard-size boards at

sawmills. The lumber must be then dried or

seasoned.
 The angle of the plane of the cut of the boards

will have an effect on the resulting lumber.

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• Lumber is a rectangular length of wood
sawn parallel to the tree stem and cut to
specific width, thickness, and length.
• To manufacture lumber, logs are received
in a sawmill yard where they are sorted
and graded to identify which logs are best
suited for making specific products.
• Next, machines remove the bark from the
logs, and then the logs are crosscut (cut
perpendicular to the grain) to specific
lumber lengths.

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 Each crosscut log is conveyed into a saw that
cuts through the log lengthwise at measured
intervals to produce boards of a given
thickness.
 Three major grades:
structural grade,
appearance grade, and
factory grade
 Quarter sawed rift-cut is cut parallel to the axis
of the tree and radially across the annual-rings.
When the wood is cut tangential to the annual
rings, it is called slash-cut.

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 Seasoning – drying slowly and uniformly to
prevent cracking and warping and thus
stabilizing the moisture content.
 Unseasoned wood readily takes up and retain
moisture, adversely affect the wood in a
number of ways such as:
 dimensional changes in the timber,

 Lowering the strength of the wood,

 Fungal growth, etc…

 Wood that is properly dried is stronger up to

two and one-half times than a comparable
piece of green wood.

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 The moisture in wood is in two forms: free and
combined.
 Free moisture is moisture outside the cell, and

 Combined moisture is water that has been

incorporated in to the cell walls.

 In green wood, moisture will constitute from 25
to 200 percent of the oven-dry weight of the
lumber, and most of this must be evaporated
from the wood in the seasoning process.

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 The timber can be either air-dried or kiln-
dried.
 As the wood dries, the free moisture is
evaporated from the surface and moisture from
the interior of the porous lumber equalizes
with drier surface.
 When the moisture content stabilizes, the
drying process is complete.
 Air drying will reduce the moisture content to
about 15 percent, a level that is acceptable for
most construction purposes.

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 Lumber that is to be used for purposes such as
furniture, flooring, and cabinetwork is kiln-dried
in few days using temperature of 68 to 82oC.
 All woods have the ability to reabsorb moisture
from the atmosphere, depending on the
humidity of its surrounding.
 This can cause a certain amount of dimensional
instability.
 Wood that has been subjected to temperature of
100oC for a length of time during boiling,
steaming, or soaking will, with time, become less
able to absorb humidity from the atmosphere.

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Shrinkage, warping, and checking
 Shrinkage will occur in the drying of wood

when the combined moisture begins to be

evaporated from the cell walls.
 The contraction will be across the cell walls

rather than longitudinal, cells shrinking

proportional to the thickness of their cell walls.
 When shrinkage occurs unequally for any

reason, warping results. If drying proceeds at

unequal rates over different portions of a piece
of lumber, warping will occur.

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WARPING 21
 When wood is cut tangentially, the dried piece
will be convex because of unequal tangential
shrinkage.
 Irregularities in the grain of the wood will
produce more pronounced irregularities in the
dried boards.
 Checks are longitudinal cracks across the growth
rings that can occur during drying of timber.
 Unequal shrinkage produces strains within the
wood, and checks can result. They can be
temporary, occurring when the outer portion of
a piece of wood dries too rapidly and contracts
over the inner portion.
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 These checks that appear in the outer layer of
the wood may close up and become invisible as
the wood of the inner part of the lumber dries
and contracts.
 Other checks of a more serious nature can

occur when the difference in tangential

shrinkage is too great relative to the radial
shrinkage to be accommodated.
Large radial checks such as those sometimes seen
in posts can then occur.

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Defects in lumber
 Anything that adversely affects the strength,
durability, or utility of a piece of wood is a
defect, and these may be within the wood itself
or be produced by warping.
 Shecks are longitudinal cracks in the wood that
follow the growth rings and develop prior to
the lumbers being cut. They are sometimes a
result of heavy winds.
 Checks, as described earlier, are longitudinal
splits across the growth rings resulting from
uneven drying.

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 s k
Shec

Checks 25
 Knots are formed at the base of branches where
they extend into the stem of the tree.
 Only wood that comes from the base of the tree
where there are no branches is free of knots. If the
branch was dead, a loose knot is formed.
 A spike knot occurs when the cut is longitudinal to
the branch.
 The effect of the knots depends on the use of the
wood and the location and size of the knots.
 They have little effect on the wood in shear or in
compression members. For beams in bending
however a knot in the part of the beam subjected
to tension can significantly reduce its maximum
load.
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 Knots

Spike
knot

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 Pitch pockets are accumulation of resins in
openings between the annual rings.
 Bark pockets are formed when the bark is wholly
or partially encased in wood.
 Compression wood is formed on the lower side
of the branches or leaning tree trunks. It is
darker than the normal wood, has a high lignin
content, higher specific gravity, greater
longitudinal shrinkage, and is not as tough as
normal wood. The strength of compression
wood is not predictable, and many failures in
wood members have been found to be caused
by compression wood.
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Pitch pockets
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Bark Compression wood
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Strength of Wood
 Strong in compression and tension - low density,
timber can be classified as material of high strength:
weight-ratio.
 The fibers act like so many cylindrical tubes firmly
bound together in the way that they withstand stress.
 Tensile strength in wood parallel to the grain is much
higher (three times as much) than compressive
strength.
 Tensile loads perpendicular to the grain of wood
fibers cause the fibers to split apart.
 The tensile loads that can be carried perpendicular to
the grain are one-tenth or less of the tensile load that
can be withstood by the wood in the parallel direction
with the grain.
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 Compression loads parallel to the grain can be
carried by the strongest fibers, whereas
compression loads perpendicular to the grain
are carried by both weak and strong fibers.
 Wood in compression parallel to the grain can
carry three to four times the load that wood in
compression perpendicular to the grain can
carry.
 Compression failure of wood perpendicular to
the grain involves the complete crushing of the
wood fiber. Compression failure of wood
parallel to the grain involves the bending or
buckling of the wood fibers.
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 For timber beams in flexure, the critical factors
in evaluating the load that can be carried are the
compressive strength parallel to the grain and
the shear strength parallel to the grain. The
resistance of the shear strength parallel to the
grain is very low. However, if the wood is free
of defects the initial failure will be compressive.
Stiffness also plays a role in timber beams, since
deflection is usually limited to 1/360 of span.
Stiffness can be measure of strength, in that
stiffer timber beams are usually denser.

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 The modulus of elasticity in wood is high
relative to its compressive strength, compared
with other building materials.
 Wood does not, exhibit a well defined yield

point, and therefore the proportional limit is

used to measure elastic strength.
Factors affecting timber strength
 direction of the wood fibers,

 moisture,

 weight,

 rate of growth, and

 duration of loading.

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Time of loading
 Test results reveal that it can sustain greater

loads for short time than it can over a long

period.
 This dependence of the strength of timber on

the duration of loading is termed creep rupture

or static fatigue.
 Since the strength of timber decreases with

time of application of force, working stress

derived from test results must take into
account the rate of straining.
 Generally to be on the safety side relatively

high safety factor (3 and above) is taken in the

design of timber structural elements.
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 Within the proportionality limit, the modulus
of elasticity of timber can be calculated from
the ratio of the unit stress and unit strain.
 If the test results are obtained from the bending
test, then
E=PL3/48Iδ, P=Mid-span load
L = Distance b/n supports
I=Second moment of inertia
δ = Deflection at mid-span

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Decay and preservation of timber
 Wood - an organic material - can be attacked by

bacteria and fungi.

 Can be eaten up by- insects such as pole-

bearers and termites or

 destroyed by fire which decomposes it into

carbon dioxide, water vapor and ash.

 For this reason, timber used for construction

purpose should be preserved and protected.

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 Proper seasoning, natural or artificial, is the most
effective means of preservation.
 The resistance to decay and deterioration of
seasoned timber is further improved by
impregnation with preservatives chemicals,
brush treatment with paint or varnish, damp
proofing when appropriate and providing as
much as possible free circulation of air where
ever it is used.

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Characteristics of common Ethiopian timber
 Because of the rather unique climate and

topographic conditions, various types of trees

can grow and are found in Ethiopia.
 Unfortunately, however, very little
investigation has been done so far in the way of
determining the characteristics of the different
species for building purposes.
 The table below presents the available
information of the most common timber used
in the construction industry.

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Some characteristics of common Ethiopian Timbers

Local Name Botanical Latin or Trade Characteristics

name
1. Bahrzaf Eucalyptus  Broad-leaf tree
 Low resistance to termite
 Difficult to treat or impregnate
 g=670kg/m3

2. Kararo Aningeria Adolfi Friderici  Low resistance to termite

 Ease to treat or impregnste
 g=450kg/m3

3. Kosso Hagenia abyssinica  Broad-leaf tree

 High resistance to termite
 Turns to dark red when
seasoned
 g=630kg/m3

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1. Tid Juniperus procera African  Conifer
Pencil Cedar  Almost immune to termite
due to oil resins it contains
 Turns to red-brown when
seasoned
 Difficult to treat or impregnate
 Shrinks little
 g=550kg/m3

2. Tukur Pygeum africanum Iron  Broad-leaf tree

Inchet wood  Turns to pinkish brown on
seasoning
Red Ivory  Very hard(iron wood)
 g=630kg/m3

3. Wanza Cordia africanalam East  Broad-leaf tree

Africa Yellow wood  coarse grained
 g=440kg/m3

4. Zegba Podocarpus gracilior East  Conifer

African Yellow Wood  Easy to treat or impregnate
 pale ivory to yellow in colour
 g=440kg/m3
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