Property predictions of wood using microwaves

Sammanfattning: Internal properties of wood are an area of great interest in the worldwide wood industry. Higher demands on quality and productivity create needs for cheap and fast non-destructive methods for measuring the internal properties of wood. This work was carried out in order to investigate the possibility of using microwaves to predict the internal properties of sawn timber. The work consists of two parts. The first part has been to develop a scanner system based on a microwave camera (Satimo 9.4 GHz). The second part has been to develop prediction models for density, moisture content and strength properties of sawn timber using multivariate calibration. The primary result from this work is a well-functioning apparatus for microwave scanning of wood in a laboratory environment. The results also show that this technique is well suited to predicting density and moisture content of sawn timber and has a potential for strength property measurements.