Charakterystyka jakości technicznej drewna paulowni COTE-2

Seedlings of Paulownia (Paulownia sp.) has increasingly appeared in the merchant offers in Poland. However, the knowledge of the technical characteristics of its wood is still insufficient because comprehensive studies of wood properties for this species have not been performed. The main aim of this study was to determine the selected physical and mechanical properties of Paulownia COTE−2 wood. The wood comes from the plantation of Paulownia COTE−2 located in Granada region in Spain. The investigation were carried on 162 samples, according to Polish standards. We analysed the following physical properties: air−dry density, oven−dry density, basic density, proportion of wood substance, wood porosity, total shrinkage of wood in longitudinal, tangential and radial anatomical directions, volumetric shrinkage, coefficients of each of mentioned shrinkage, the anisotropy index of shrinkage and mechanical properties: compression strength, static bending, modulus of elasticity in static bending, including the coefficients of the mechanical properties mentioned before. The results show that Paulownia wood is very light, with the density of 270 kg/m3 and low shrinking (volumetric shrinkage equaled to 7%). The mechanical properties of Paulownia wood are closely related to its density. Static bending equaled to 38 MPa and compression strength parallel to grain amounted to 24 MPa.