Exploring physical and thermo-elastic properties of two tropical wood species: insights from probabilistic analysis
Résumé
This paper aims to investigate the influence of temperature on the bending strength and modulus of elasticity of the tropical wood species: Pterocarpus soyauxii and Triplochiton scleroxylon. A probabilistic analysis of the fracture behavior of these two species is also conducted, utilizing a two-parameter Weibull distribution to assess the effect of temperature. Bending properties were measured for temperature ranges from 25°C to 100°C using four-point static bending tests. The findings reveal that temperature significantly impacts moisture content, bending strength, and longitudinal modulus of elasticity. Bending strength decreases linearly from 44 to 32 MPa for triplochiton scleroxylon and from 91 to 65 MPa for pterocarpus soyauxii. The modulus of elasticity shows random variation with temperature; it increases between 25°C and 45°C then decreases between 45°C and 100°C. The Weibull modulus varies between 9.2 and 15.6 for triplochiton scleroxylon, and pterocarpus soyauxii presents lower values which are between 3.4 and 6.1. In general, for both species, the Weibull modulus evolves very randomly with temperature. These results
give engineers an overall understanding of the thermomechanical behavior of tropical wood species.