Comparison of non-destructive tools for measuring MOE of southern pine trees
摘要
Various non-destructive evaluation (NDE) technologies increasingly used to assess log stiffness and support sorting, segregation and processing decisions. However, comprehensive comparative evaluations of various NDE tools across the wood value chain remain limited. Therefore, this study compared several NDE methods for estimating modulus of elasticity (MOE) in southern pine grown in Queensland, Australia, at three processing stages: standing trees pre-harvest, felled logs post-harvest, and boards produced from those logs. Standing trees measurement included ultrasound MOE assessment on increment cores (USMOE) and Director ST300 (ST300_MOE) and IML-Resi PD-400 resistance drilling (Resi_MOE). Felled log measurements were obtained using Beam Identification by Non-destructive Grading (BING_MOE) and the resonance acoustic tool Hitman HM200 (HM200_MOE). These measurements were then related to log MOE, log density, and the average MOE and modulus of rupture of boards cut from the same trees. Finally, log stiffness measurement tools were compared in terms of deployability, efficiency, and predictive power. NDE tools applied to standing trees pre-harvest generally exhibited lower predictive power in estimating log and board MOE than tools applied to felled logs. For log MOE, HM200_MOE showed the strongest relationship with BING_MOE (