Experimental and numerical analysis of moisture transport in walnut and cherry wood in radial and tangential material directions

Abstract

The diffusion properties of walnut (Juglans regia L.) and cherry (Prunus avium L.) wood perpendicular to the grain are presented. The wet and dry cup tests were carried out in normal climate conditions. Simultaneously, inverse analyses by means of the finite element (FE) method were conducted based on the experimental sorption data. The results show that the numerically derived diffusion model can predict the mass changes during the experiments with sufficient accuracy with a maximum global relative error of 0.43%. However, the numerically determined diffusion coefficients do not show an agreement with the experimental data.