Micromechanical modelling of mechanical behaviour and strength of wood: State-of-the-art review

An overview of the micromechanical theoretical and numerical models of wood is presented. Different methods of analysis of the effects of wood microstructures at different scale levels on the mechanical behaviour, deformation and strength of wood are discussed and compared. Micromechanical models of deformation and strength of wood are divided into three groups: cellular models (applied most often to the mesoscale or cell scale analysis of the wood deformation), continuum micromechanics and homogenization based methods, models which consider wood as a composite and are applied mainly to the analysis of wood at the microscale (cell wall scale) level and multiscale models. Lattice and composite models, which are used to analyze the damage and fracture of wood, are considered in a separate section. The areas of applicability and strong sides of each approach are discussed. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.