Acoustics of Wood

Professor Dr. eng. Voichita Bucur, currently adjunct professor at School of Science, RMIT University Melbourne, Australia, received her bachelor in Engineering in 1962 from Polytechnic Institute Brasov, Romania, and her PhD in Mechanics-Ultrasonics in 1984 from the Institut Supérieur des Materiaux, St Ouen, Paris, today known as Institut Supérieur de Mécanique de Paris, France.  Her fields of research encompass development of non-destructive techniques (vibrational, acoustic, ultrasonic, X- rays) for the assessment of the quality of trees, wood products and wood-based composites, mechanical characterisation of materials with non-destructive techniques, wood science and technology, and mechanical characterisation of wood for musical instruments. She wrote and edited books (7) published by Springer since 2003 and published more than 150 articles in scientific journals. In 2004 she was awarded with silver medal by Société d’ Encouragement du Progrès, France, for contributions to mechanics, acoustics, wood science, education and service to the society. In 2007 she had the distinguish award at 15th International Symposium on Nondestructive Testing of Wood, Duluth, Minnesota, USA, for contribution to the development of nondestructive techniques for wood and wood-based composites. In 2021 she had the prestigious RWB Stephens Medal awarded by the Institute of Acoustics UK for outstanding contributions to acoustics research or education.

Introduction.- Ultrasonic wave propagation in solids.- Wood characterisation with mechanical vibrations.- Damping of mechanical vibrations in wood.- Attenuation of ultrasonic waves in wood.- Transducers for ultrasonic waves.- Global elastic constants of wood.- Local elastic characterisation of wood.- Acoustic and elastic invariants and nonlinearity of wood.- Acoustics of trees.- Effect of sylvicultural factors on acoustical properties of trees.- Acoustic methods for wood products' quality assessment.- Environmental modifiers of wood detected with ultrasonic waves.- Acoustical properties of wood species for musical instruments.- Substitutive wood species for musical instruments.- Acoustic emission.- Advanced treatments on acoustic emission signals.- Acoustic emission and digital imaging technique.- Acousto- ultrasonics, a nondestructive testing method of wood.- Acousto ultrasonics on trees, logs and utility poles.- High power ultrasound.- Acoustic emission technique for art objects.- Ultrasound for imaging wood panel paintings.- Holographic interferometry for imaging art objects.- wood painted panels inspection with THz imaging technique.- Archaeologic wood, wood of historic artefacts and structures.- Artificial intelligence and acoustics of wood.