Relationship between radial variations in shrinkage and drying defects of tree disks

This study was conducted to investigate the relationship between radial variations in shrinkage and drying behavior of larch disks during radio-frequency/vacuum (RF/V) drying. Despite considerable variations in shrinkage both within and between logs, some trends were observable for each log. Actual radial shrinkage was much larger than free radial shrinkage with a ratio of tangential shrinkage (alpha(T)) to radial shrinkage (alpha(R)) ranging from 1.27 to 1.62. If the alpha(T)/alpha(R) ratio of larch was about 2.5, the relative displacement was theoretically estimated to be 1.6 to 1.65, showing good agreement with the experimental results. The results showed that the formation of V-cracking was closely related to the actual differential shrinkage, which is the difference between the estimated tangential shrinkage and actual radial shrinkage after drying.