Probabilistic Assessment of Engineered Timber Reusability after Moisture Exposure

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Meng, Yiping, Jiang, Chulin, Scurr, Courtney Jayne, Rahimian, Farzad Pour, Hughes, David
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Meng, Yiping
Jiang, Chulin
Scurr, Courtney Jayne
Rahimian, Farzad Pour
Hughes, David
author_facet Meng, Yiping
Jiang, Chulin
Scurr, Courtney Jayne
Rahimian, Farzad Pour
Hughes, David
contents Engineered timber is pivotal to low-carbon construction, but moisture uptake during its service life can compromise structural reliability and impede reuse within a circular economy model. Despite growing interest, quantitative standards for classifying the reusability of moisture-exposed timber are still lacking. This study develops a probabilistic framework to determine the post-exposure reusability of engineered timber. Laminated specimens were soaked to full saturation, dried to 25% moisture content, and subjected to destructive three-point flexural testing. Structural integrity was quantified by a residual-performance metric that assigns 80% weight to the retained flexural modulus and 20% to the retained maximum load, benchmarked against unexposed controls. A hierarchical Bayesian multinomial logistic model with horseshoe priors, calibrated through Markov-Chain Monte-Carlo sampling, jointly infers the decision threshold separating three Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) reuse levels and predicts those levels from five field-measurable features: density, moisture content, specimen size, grain orientation, and surface hardness. Results indicate that a single wet-dry cycle preserves 70% of specimens above the 0.90 residual-performance threshold (Level 1), whereas repeated cycling lowers the mean residual to 0.78 and reallocates many specimens to Levels 2-3. The proposed framework yields quantified decision boundaries and a streamlined on-site testing protocol, providing a foundation for robust quality assurance standards.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_11061
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Probabilistic Assessment of Engineered Timber Reusability after Moisture Exposure
Meng, Yiping
Jiang, Chulin
Scurr, Courtney Jayne
Rahimian, Farzad Pour
Hughes, David
Applications
General Economics
Economics
Engineered timber is pivotal to low-carbon construction, but moisture uptake during its service life can compromise structural reliability and impede reuse within a circular economy model. Despite growing interest, quantitative standards for classifying the reusability of moisture-exposed timber are still lacking. This study develops a probabilistic framework to determine the post-exposure reusability of engineered timber. Laminated specimens were soaked to full saturation, dried to 25% moisture content, and subjected to destructive three-point flexural testing. Structural integrity was quantified by a residual-performance metric that assigns 80% weight to the retained flexural modulus and 20% to the retained maximum load, benchmarked against unexposed controls. A hierarchical Bayesian multinomial logistic model with horseshoe priors, calibrated through Markov-Chain Monte-Carlo sampling, jointly infers the decision threshold separating three Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) reuse levels and predicts those levels from five field-measurable features: density, moisture content, specimen size, grain orientation, and surface hardness. Results indicate that a single wet-dry cycle preserves 70% of specimens above the 0.90 residual-performance threshold (Level 1), whereas repeated cycling lowers the mean residual to 0.78 and reallocates many specimens to Levels 2-3. The proposed framework yields quantified decision boundaries and a streamlined on-site testing protocol, providing a foundation for robust quality assurance standards.
title Probabilistic Assessment of Engineered Timber Reusability after Moisture Exposure
topic Applications
General Economics
Economics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.11061