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Mechanical performance of glulam products made with Portuguese poplar

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Abstract

Due to its average mechanical properties, poplar, a fast-growing species, has been disfavored compared to stronger species for several decades. Wood-based products may help changing that perspective and thus, poplar has been gaining its market share for structural uses. A state-of-the-art review concerning the use of poplar to produce glued laminated products, with special focus on the use of Portuguese poplar, is presented. The Portuguese forest produces a great variety of species. The most common poplar species found in this country are Populus x canadensis, P. nigra L., and P. alba L. Despite its limited availability, and the market hesitation on its structural application, recent studies on poplar grown in the Portuguese forest showed its suitability for structural purposes. Glued laminated timber (GLT) beams made with this species revealed a very promising mechanical behavior. Bending strength tests evidenced a ductile behavior on more than 70% of the beams, which motivated deepening the study on the raw material used to produce those beams. To predict the mechanical behavior of such beams, a 3D numerical model was developed. The numerically predicted results were compared with the experimental ones, showing very good agreement between both approaches.

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Acknowledgements

This work was partly financed by FEDER funds through the Competitiveness Factors Operational Programme–COMPETE and by national funds through FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology, within the scope of the Project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007633 as well as, by the Operational Program Competitiveness and Internationalization R&D Projects Companies in Co-promotion, Portugal 2020, within the scope of the project OptimizedWood – POCI-01-0247-FEDER-017867. The authors wish to thank Foundation for Science and Technology for the Ph.D. grant (PD/BD/52656/2014) given to Carlos Martins, to Dynea AS and Henkel for providing the adhesives and finally to Pedrosa Irmãos for the collaboration given concerning the timber.

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  1. Institute for Sustainability and Innovation in Structural Engineering, Departamento de Engenharia Civil, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade de Coimbra, Rua Luís Reis Santos–Pólo II da Universidade de Coimbra, 3030-788, Coimbra, Portugal

    Sandra R. S. Monteiro, Carlos Martins & Alfredo M. P. G. Dias

  2. Structures Department, Laboratório Nacional de Engenharia Civil, Av. do Brasil, 101, 1700-066, Lisboa, Portugal

    Helena Cruz

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  1. Sandra R. S. Monteiro
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Correspondence to Sandra R. S. Monteiro.

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Monteiro, S.R.S., Martins, C., Dias, A.M.P.G. et al. Mechanical performance of glulam products made with Portuguese poplar. Eur. J. Wood Prod. 78, 1007–1015 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00107-020-01569-y

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