Moisture gradient analysis during sawn-timber drying

Full understanding of moisture transport in wood is not achieved despite many transport theories (Thybring et al. 2021). It remains an essential research domain to improve both timber quality and drying schedules. X-ray Computed Tomography (CT) has shown to be a useful tool in this regard as it allows for the computation of moisture-content (MC) at voxel level (Couceiro 2019). To the knowledge of the authors, no method exists to analyse the evolution of MC and gradient (MG) distributions, that can later be related to the quality of the sawn-timber. Popular methods, such as presented in Esping 1988, to quantify the MG are not adapted to CT (local) data as they provide averaged (global) MC and MG. In this study, an analysis method based on image-processing and CT data is presented to statistically quantify the evolution of MC and MG distributions within cross-sections of timber during drying.