SIRT at the Botanic Gardens

John Moore, Stefan Lehneke and myself were at Edinburgh's Royal Botanic Gardens last Sunday (the 8th November) giving a free walk-in workshop for children and parents about the science of wood. This included viewing wood under microscopes, converstations about wood species and properties, and a 3D slideshow. We'll be there again (in the new John Hope Visitors' Centre) on Saturday 21st November from 1pm until 4pm.

Wood NDT conference

I attended in the 16th International Nondestructive Testing and Evaluation of Wood Symposium in Beijing this month and presented a paper about the work we have been doing in the UK using acoustic tools to study the variation in wood properties and the potential for resource segregation.

The conference also included presentations on grading and inspection of components, structures and trees and enabled SIRT to create new links with researchers working around the world on topics of interest to us. The next conference in this series will be in Sopron, Hungary 5th-7th September 2011.

UKTGC and BSI B/518

We are very pleased to have been invited onto the UK Timber Grading Committee and British Standards Committee B/518 (structual timber). This will help us keep informed of the latest developments in codes and standards related to grading and to provide input based on our research findings. We will also keep you informed through this blog. The next meetings are 4th and 5th November.

COST E53 conference - more details

We are pleased to be hosting the final meeting of COST Action E53 at Our Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh from the 4-7th May 2010. The conference is focused on issues of quality control for wood & wood products including:

* Scanning of stems, logs and boards for characterisation of geometrical and quality properties.
* Wood drying, distortion and determination of moisture content.
* Assessment of strength, stiffness and visual appearance of timber and wood products.
* Understanding end user requirements for wood and wood products.
* Future trends in technology, wood characteristics, and end user requirements.

There will be two days of particular interest to industry where we hope to be able to disseminate the results of the four years of pan European research cooperation in this COST Action - and also get feedback and discussion from producers and end users. These days are the 'industry day' (5th May 2010) and a half day workshop by the European Wood Drying Group (4th May 2010).

For more details of the themes and programme please visit http://cte.napier.ac.uk/e53

COST E53 conference

We will be hosting the final COST E53 conference in Edinburgh from the 4th to the 7th May 2010 at Our Dynamic Earth. The first two days will be particularly interesting for industry practitioners covering topics related to log scanning, grading, wood drying and general timber quality.

More details will follow shortly.

NOCMAT 2009

In September we will be presenting a paper at the 11th International Conference on Non-conventional Materials and Technologies (NOCMAT 2009) in Bath.

The paper, entitled "Strategic Integrated Research in Timber: Getting the most out of the UK’s timber resource" will be placed in our online repository after the conference. Here is the abstract:

Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis) is the United Kingdom’s main commercial tree species accounting for nearly one-third of the UK's total woodland area and half of its conifer estate. Sawn timber from this species readily grades to the C16 strength class, but there are factors beyond the structural grade that can influence its acceptance as a construction material. This paper summarises the results from resource characterisation studies that have investigated the properties of Sitka spruce at the standing-tree scale down to the scale of a few microns. These studies have substantially improved the understanding of the impact on mechanical performance of structural timber of factors at the micro-structural level (e.g. cellulose structure and abundance) and at the forest-level (e.g. genetics, the environment and forest management). End-user requirements for timber are discussed in terms of what is, and is not, provided by current grading practice and some of the main misconceptions about UK-timber are challenged.

Short KTPs with the SIRT team

Short KTPs are an extension of the highly successful Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) programme and will be launched on 1st July.

Like regular KTPs, these "short KTPs" involve a company and a Higher Education Institute (e.g. University) working together on a project driven by the business needs of the company. Funding is a combination of public sector and company money - Government grants of 40 to 60% will be available. The person who works directly on the project can already be an employee of the company or University.

The SIRT team has already worked with companies through the existing KTP scheme in which projects normally last two years. The new short KTPs are designed to tackle shorter-term, more tactical, company needs. The project duration will typically be between 10 and 40 weeks. Both schemes are available throughout the UK.

Anyone interested in working with us through short or regular KTPs, can contact the Centre for Timber Engineering's Alastair Stupart on 0131 455 2831 or by email at a.stupart@napier.ac.uk.