Abstract

Hardwood sawmills throughout the United States were under severe financial pressures during the 2007 to 2009 recession. This was attributed to demand weakness, profitability challenges, and supply chain inefficiencies. The focus of our study was on hardwood sawmills in New York State. A supply chain assessment tool was created to evaluate the supply chain processes of 15 sawmills that had the capability to produce from 3 to 20 million board feet of lumber per year and accounted for 31 percent of the hardwood lumber produced in New York. We collected data that allowed us to rate each sawmill's supply chain and computed their relative efficiency using a mathematical modeling technique called Data Envelopment Analysis. We then used a Pearson correlation analysis to compare our sawmill assessment scores and the relative efficiency score from each sawmill and found a significant correlation of 0.716. The assessment tool we developed can help hardwood sawmills find opportunities to improve their supply chains, allowing their business to save money and improve profit margins.

Abstract

An exploratory Web survey was implemented in 2012 of 250 architects in North America that specialize in nonresidential building design. Approximately one-third of the respondents had used architectural elements defined as solid wood heavy timbers, glue-laminated timber, and other engineered beams or posts, which are visually exposed. These members can be structural or nonstructural.

Results showed that these visual wood products are used in virtually all types of nonresidential buildings and are growing in popularity. This coincides with an overall growth in popularity for wood interior finish in these buildings. It was also found that there is a link between the architectural elements and interior finish with a desire to match species, color, and character.

The use of wood as an architectural design element has gone a long way in North America in increasing its popularity in nonresidential construction, especially showcase public structures such as educational and recreational buildings. Because the nonresidential building sector has been identified as the sector with a large growth potential for wood, this trend is encouraging. Combined with advances in structural engineered products and building systems, improved engineering and architectural training in wood, and continued efforts to expand the allowance for wood solutions in the building codes, this may be an indication of potential increases in the use of wood products, both nonstructurally and structurally.

Abstract

In this article, we describe a system for machine vision–based lumber strength prediction. The system utilizes images taken from all four sides of pinewood boards. Those images are further divided into small subareas, and the local gradients inside each area are used to calculate the local grain direction. Together, these directions form the grain direction map. The grain direction map and knot features are used to predict the breaking strength of the board. Because of the high speed of production lines, we also present a parallel general-purpose graphics processing unit (GPGPU) implementation of the method to achieve real-time performance using low-cost hardware. We describe the challenges of the design on a GPU compared with a traditional central processing unit implementation. Most of the modern sawmills already have multiple camera systems in use, making the camera-based strength prediction extremely cost effective. In our experiments, an r² value of 0.63 was obtained between the measured strength attributes of the board and our strength prediction coefficient. The ground truth for the breaking strength was measured using destructive 3-point bending tests. Using a regular desktop computer, the described system achieves a throughput of over 50 Mpixels/s. For the parallel implementation, we provide qualitative evaluation of the results and a comparison of the computational speed on several platforms.

Abstract

The main objective of this study was to determine whether bat manufacturing units operational in Kashmir were sustainable entrepreneurial ventures or whether they exhibit a declining trend in terms of economic viability. The study also aimed to document the main constraints that confront the cricket bat industry in order to devise future strategies and research needs that can help to exploit the full economic potential of this indigenous wood-based industry. The present study was carried out in a bat manufacturing cluster, which is composed of about 70 units concentrated on the Jammu–Srinagar national highway in the valley of Kashmir (India). Results revealed that the cost of manufacturing cricket bats decreased with the increase in the size of the industrial unit, indicating the existence of “economies of scale.” The gross returns earned by small-, medium-, and large-scale units were more than 2.7, 5.0, and 8.2 million rupees (Rs), with benefit-cost ratios (BCRs) of 1.69, 2.05, and 2.29, respectively. The cost and return structure, in relation to various economic indicators such as BCR, net income, breakeven quantity, and export competitiveness, reflects positive trends, and the bat manufacturing activity fetched a reasonable profit to the unit holders, besides providing employment opportunities to youth and thereby reflecting that this entrepreneurial venture is an economically viable livelihood activity. These results indicate that, despite underutilization of installed production capacity, the manufacture of cricket bats is a lucrative venture in Kashmir and can be up-scaled to become highly competitive in terms of its export potential to other countries.

Abstract

A weather-protected aboveground field test was established at Kincardine, Ontario, Canada, to assess the performance against termites of two formulations of carbon-based preservative in Pacific silver fir (Abies amabilis) and white spruce (Picea glauca). A naturally durable untreated reference species was also included. The boards were visually inspected for decay and termite attack after 6 years. Termite attack was negligible, but the test material was challenged by Coniophora olivacea, a soil-inhabiting, strand-forming, brown-rot fungus. While decay was well advanced in some untreated controls and western red cedar (Thuja plicata) reference samples, treated samples that had been similarly challenged remained in excellent condition.

Abstract

Red oak, Douglas-fir, and ponderosa pine lumber was treated with a silicon/paraffinic system to assess the ability of the treatment to limit dimensional changes and moisture uptake during changes in temperature or relative humidity. The treatment initially had little effect on either property, but the magnitude of weight gain and dimensional changes tended to decline with repeated moisture cycles. The results suggest that the silicon/paraffin treatment had the potential to limit vapor moisture sorption and could reduce the potential for wood to deform with repeated moisture cycles.

Abstract

Ozonized soybean oil (OZSBO), obtained by the ozone cleavage reaction of the double bond of soybean oil, was reacted with polymeric methylene-diphenyl-4,4′-diisocyanate (pMDI) to prepare wood adhesive. To investigate the feasibility of this preparation method, different polyurethane adhesives were prepared with a variety of equivalent molar ratios (eq-MRs) of OZSBO to pMDI. The chemical reactions of the adhesives were analyzed using Fourier transform infrared, and their thermal characteristics were investigated by differential scanning calorimetry and thermogravimetric analysis. The OZSBO/pMDI resins with eq-MRs of 1:0.5, 1:0.75, and 1:1 showed an exothermic reaction at 150°C, resins with eq-MRs of 1:2 and 1:3 exhibited exothermic peaks at 185°C, and resins with an eq-MR of 1:4 presented an exothermic peak at 180°C. The maximum adhesion strength was reached when plywood was bonded using the adhesive with an eq-MR of 1:2. This result shows that adhesion strength was not proportionally increased with the addition of pMDI after an eq-MR of 1:2, indicating that adhesion strength was attributed not only to reactions of the residual –NCO groups in the adhesive with the hydroxyl groups of wood during the manufacturing of plywood but also to the cross-linking reaction between OZSBO and pMDI.