Abstract:

It is very difficult to characterize the fracture surface of wood with traditional way because of its irregularity and complexity. This paper, inspired from slit island method (SIM) and mass fractal method, proposes a new method, by which the change of sectional area with spatial location in wood fractures can be determined, to quantify the character of fracture surfaces. The experiment is done by continuously microtoming a fractured sample embedded with paraffin at intervals of hundreds micron along the longitudinal axis from tip to end of fracture. The results indicate there exists a linear correlation between the area and the corresponding location in a double logarithm coordinate. The slope, here termed as section variation dimension (D_L), is located between 2.23 to 2.75 with the D_L of pressed zone being smaller than that of tensile zone for a wood fractured by static bending, and D_L can be used to describe quantitatively the complexity of fracture surface of wood.

Key words: wood, fracture, fractal, section variation dimension