Innovative engineered wood products made from Thermo-hydro- mechanical densified wood with enhanced physical, mechanical and fire performance (WoDeFi)

PROJECT CODE: J4-50132
PROJECT TITLE: Innovative engineered wood products made from Thermo-hydro- mechanical densified wood with enhanced physical, mechanical and fire performance (WoDeFi)
PROJECT TEAM: Andreja Kutnar, PhD (leader), Han Lei, Marica Mikuljan, Jaka Gašper Pečnik, Matthew Schwarzkopf
PERIOD: 01.10.2023 – 30.09.2026
BUDGET: 400.000 EUR
FINANCING: ARIS
PROJECT COORDINATOR: InnoRenew CoE (Slovenia)
PARTNERS: Slovenian National Building and Civil Engineering Institute (Slovenia)

In the past decade, the demand to use wood for applications in both residential and non-residential building construction has been increasing. As a consequence of increased competition from traditional and new industries based on renewable resources, forest resources must be considered limited. This increase in demand requires technologies to increase the life span and functionality of forest products to reduce strain on forests. Already, competitive, and environmentally-friendly wood modification processes like Thermo-hydro-mechanical (THM) densification have been and are being developed to improve the intrinsic properties of wood and provide the desired form and functionality.

Furthermore, wood as a natural material owns some inherent features which could cause some problems. The current standards normally rate untreated mass-timber material as flammable material. Hence, virgin wood products have a restrictive role in most of the built environment. This has been reinforced by some building codes and regulations through height and area limitations. The implementation of engineering processes to improve wood with regards to durability or other properties should not forget its effect on fire behavior. Therefore, the overall goal of the project is to apply wood THM densification to low value wood species to develop high performance EWPs with enhanced mechanical properties and fire resistance.

InnoRenew CoE project activities

InnoRenew CoE will be focused on developing a Thermo-hydro-mechanical (THM) densification process in combination with other suitable wood modification treatments in order to add value to low quality wood species that traditionally weren’t use in construction. Then the optimized wood modification procedure will be applied into engineered timber products (EWPs) with construction element size to verify its improvement of mechanical properties and performance under fire.