The development of pneumatic fatigue test rig for wood-based specimens

Abstract

In product design, the focus is increasingly shifting towards optimizing and increasing the efficiency of the development process. This can be achieved with advanced numerical tools, but these methods require precise knowledge of material properties. One of the desired properties is the dynamic load behavior of the material. The research is directly related with the company that developed the slender wooden beams used in industry to produce windows of larger dimensions (height over 3 m). For the testing of wooden beams, the pneumatic four-point bending fatigue test rig was developed. In this paper, the whole structure of the test rig is described in detail. Based on the performed experiments of dynamic strength, the Woehler curve was determined, which serves as a necessary input for further numerical simulation of the fatigue process of wood-based beams. Knowledge of the response of wood to dynamic loads is very important to predict its life expectancy in various products.