Determining strength of the modified wood

The article presents results of investigations of the effect of pinewood modification with methyl polymethacrylate on the anisotropy of its strength in complex stress conditions. The investigations aimed at determining the resistance of the examined wood to stretching, compression, stretching with shear, and compression with shear. For the investigations oriented on shear, shear with stretching, and shear with compression, a special specimen was prepared which differs by notch geometry from a typical Iosipescu specimen. A new test machine is described in the article, which is equipped with special specimen holders to perform investigations in complex stress conditions. Crack patterns recorded for the natural and modified wood are presented. For all tests, numerical FEM simulations were performed to obtain stress distributions inside the specimens. The calculated stress distributions were visualised as contour line projections for the natural and modified wood.