Acetylated wood in structural applications

Since the commercial introduction of acetylated wood on the market by Titan Wood in 2007, Accoya® wood has been applied in many different ways. In general, wood modification opens a whole new and broad range of innovative or renewed applications for timber. Timber may now also be used in structures previously made in steel, synthetic materials or concrete. An example is the heavy load-bearing traffic bridge constructed using Accoya® wood at Sneek in the Netherlands for which the whole process of design, fabrication, and project monitoring were commissioned by the principal to enable the bridge design and construction. All results are specific to this bridge and a second bridge of the same form is now in construction. Standardised testing is required to describe the performance of Accoya® in the wide range of structural application. This paper presents an overview of the properties of acetylated wood and discusses how this might be considered in the current regulations for structural applications.