Effects of cell wall ultrastructure on the transverse shrinkage anisotropy of Scots pine wood

A hypothesis for explaining the differential anisotropic shrinkage behavior of wood has been proposed, and it was based on the differences in the cell wall ultrastructure. The starting point of the consideration is that wood shrinkage is governed by its chemical composition, ultrastructure, and gross anatomy. It is also well known that the transverse shrinkage anisotropy of earlywood (EW) is more pronounced than that of the latewood (LW). In the paper, the cell wall ultrastructure and shrinkage anisotropy has been related to each other, and to this purpose, a set of crystallographic texture descriptors was applied. The descriptors are based on X-ray diffraction (XRD) experiments conducted on matched EW samples from different growth rings of Scots pine. The range of the microfibril angle (MFA) was identified. The ratio of the maxima of inverse pole figures (IPFs) of both the tangential (T) and radial (R) directions was determined. The ratios quantify the inhomogeneity of the spatial arrangement of the ordered areas. The results of the study clearly indicate that the transverse shrinkage of wood is governed mostly by a specific ultrastructural organization of moderately organized cell wall compounds.