Wood

Wood has played a major role throughout human history. Strong and versatile, the earliest humans used wood to make shelters, cook food, construct tools, build boats, and make weapons.

This book emphasizes the important message that architects and structural engineers must strive to ensure that the buildings they design and construct should not be major contributors to climate change. Rather, they should be exploring the use of green materials and building methods—such as timber, wood, and associated materials—in order to safeguard the environment. These sustainable materials are not only environmentally friendly, but they have the added benefit of being easy to manufacture, cost-effective, often locally available, and easily replenished. Moreover, it has been demonstrated that wood and timber are viable materials in the construction of a wide variety of building types, including medium and high-rise buildings.

With today’s ever growing economic and ecological problems, wood as a raw material takes on increasing significance as the most important renewable source of energy and as industrial feedstock for numerous products. Its chemical and anatomical structure and the excellent properties that result allow wood to be processed into the most diverse products; from logs to furniture and veneers, and from wood chippings to wooden composites and paper.

This proceedings volume presents new scientific works of the research workers and experts from the field of Wood Science & Fire.