Mechanical properties of the most common European woods: a literature review

Wood is an orthotropic material used since ancient time. A literature research about the mechanical properties of density, fracture toughness, modulus of elasticity, and Poisson’s ratio has been done to have a broader view on the subject. The publications relating to the topic were found through the two search engines Scopus and Google Scholar that have yielded several papers, including articles and book sections. In general, there is no standardization on the method of analysis carried out on wood, underlining the great difficulty in studying this complex material. The parameter of density has a great variability and needs a deeper investigation; fracture toughness is not always available in literature, not even in the different directions of the wood sample. Interesting is the modulus of elasticity, which provides a correlation with density, especially in longitudinal section but, again, it needs to be studied in detail. The parameter of Poisson’s ratio is provided as single values in three different directions, but mainly for softwood. All the parameters require a more in-depth study for both softwood and hardwood. Furthermore, the type of analysis, whether experimental or modelling, needs to be standardized to have more comparable results.