Wood shrinkage: influence of anatomy, cell wall architecture, chemical composition and cambial age

The influence of microfibril angle (MfA), density and chemical cell wall composition on shrinkage varied between the longitudinal and tangential directions as well as between wood types, namely compression wood (CW), mature wood (MW) and juvenile wood (JW). At the same MfA, CW exhibited a lower tangential shrinkage than JW, indicating the influence of the chemical composition on wood shrinkage. The chemical composition measured via FTIR micro-spectroscopy has been shown in conjunction with density to be an alternative to MfA data for shrinkage predictions. This was particularly true for wood of young cambial age for which the MfA did not correlate to shrinkage. The results indicate a possibility to reduce distortion of sawn timber by segregation using infrared (IR) and X-ray in-line measurements