Rheological model for wood

Wood as the most important natural and renewable building material plays an important role in the construction sector. Nevertheless, its hygroscopic character basically affects all related mechanical properties leading to degradation of material stiffness and strength over the service life. Accordingly, to attain reliable design of the timber structures, the influence of moisture evolution and the role of time-and moisture-dependent behaviors have to be taken into account. For this purpose, in the current study a 3D orthotropic elasto-plastic, visco-elastic, mechano-sorptive constitutive model for wood, with all material constants being defined as a function of moisture content, is presented. The corresponding numerical integration approach, with additive decomposition of the total strain is developed and implemented within the framework of the finite element method (FEM). Moreover to preserve a quadratic rate of asymptotic convergence the consistent tangent operator for the whole model is derived. Functionality and capability of the presented material model are evaluated by performing several numerical verification simulations of wood components under different combinations of mechanical loading and moisture variation. Additionally, the flexibility and universality of the introduced model to predict the mechanical behavior of different species are demonstrated by the analysis of a hybrid wood element. Furthermore, the proposed numerical approach is validated by comparisons of computational evaluations with experimental results. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.