From Empirical Wood Knowledge to Predictive Wood Physics

Abstract

This resource was prepared primarily to organize and preserve a working collection of journals and books related to wood science and technology for future reference, reading, and research. It includes a guide to wood-related journals, selected books grouped by subject, foundational mathematics and engineering texts, and a 282-row source-preservation bibliography. The book list draws on “Books in the field of wood science and technology” by Niemz, Teischinger, and Sandberg (2025). An accompanying narrative review provides historical and conceptual context. It examines the development of wood knowledge from empirical practices to quantitative physical models, emphasizing the distinction between explaining general material behavior and predicting the behavior of an unfamiliar individual piece of wood. Historical accounts by Kisser and colleagues, Youngs and Youngquist, Teischinger, Campean, and Sandberg and Niemz connect practical knowledge, research institutions, international cooperation, and modern wood physics. Moisture transport and drying provide the principal case study. The organizing framework HAIVE—hygroscopicity, anisotropy, inhomogeneity, variation, and viscoelasticity—connects material characteristics with constitutive relations, orientation fields, coupled processes, and uncertainty. The discussion addresses mass conservation, multiple moisture states, surface transfer, moisture-induced deformation, parameter identifiability, numerical verification, and independent validation. It also considers how computational tools and artificial intelligence can support research while requiring continued assessment of physical assumptions, input data, and predictive applicability. The accompanying editable Jupyter notebook contains Quarto metadata for Typst PDF output. This work presents a bibliographic, historical, and conceptual synthesis. The collection and discussion remain open to further bibliographic refinement, expanded reading, and research development.