Detection and Assessment of Wood Decay Using Guided Waves and Nonlinear Acoustics

University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign, Urbana IL

Investigators

Abstract

Whereas much has been done to preserve wood and wood composites, wood structures such as buildings, wood bridges, utility poles, and others continue to decay mainly because even the best preservative techniques available today have not been able to truly preserve these materials against the natural process of decay. The million of dollars in wood real estate transactions that occur daily without being inspected for decay and the approximately 20 million wooden utility poles in the United States illustrate the economic impact of wood decay. This proposed research addresses the detection and assessment of wood decay using a non-linear guided wave ultrasonic approach. The following two problems will serve as the focal points for this research and as demonstration projects: (1) detection and assessment of decay in utility wooden poles, and (2) detection and assessment of decay in glulam beams. These two problems have been selected because of their complexity, their economic impact, and because they represent a wide variety of wood products.