THE COMPRESSION AND TENSION

To experiment with the failure of timber compression, I used a hydraulic compression machine at B-Made at the Bartlett. Even if all experimental pieces of European beech are the same size, the compressed results are vary due to their different grains. One of the unique features of timber is its grain, which represents its ages and conditions.

The shape of timber breakage depends on the points of compression. These experiments have revealed that the forms of timber failure are different according to the grain’s directions and points of compression.