Comparison of mechanical properties of wood determined by local gently destructive tests and fully destructive tests on building elements

Demolition or repair of historic buildings is a valuable source of test materials for testing non-destructive and gently destructive methods for estimating the mechanical properties of built-in wood. The article uses the results of one such opportunity, when it was possible to study the mechanical properties of wood obtained by local measurements on a larger sample of historic and new wooden beams and compare them with the properties calculated from destructive tests of structural elements. Thirty-one wood elements (nineteen recovered from disassembled buildings and twelve new) were subjected to considerately destructive local tests using a loading mini-jack method. In this method, a small loading jack is inserted into a precisely drilled hole and a load test of the wood in compression along the fibers is performed on a part of the hole wall while measuring the achieved deformation under load. Red and white firs, and pine species constituted the recovered elements; red fir and larch the new ones. Destructive tests (in bending and compression) were also carried out on ten recovered and six new elements, and results were correlated with those of considerately destructive tests. Comparison of the assessed mechanical properties shows reasonably good correlation and promising conclusions for practical applications.