FRACTAL DIMENSION OF WOOD SURFACES FROM SORPTION ISOTHERMS

In this paper the method of fractal dimension is applied to characterize the wood surface by using water-sorption data. Three different methods are implemented to determine the fractal dimension. These methods are based on polymolecular sorption and capillary condensation and are found to estimate the fractal dimension in the range of 2.5-2.8. This implies that the estimation of the surface area of wood by determining the number of molecules of water corresponding to monolayer formation is not true. The surface in fact is far from two dimensional as being closer to a three dimensional one.