Abstract:

Wood material is a natural, sustainable, renewable and environmentally friendly material that can be used in both structural and non-structural applications. However, one of the most important negative features of wood material is that it is a hygroscopic material. Heat treatment application increase dimensional stability of the wood material and becomes more hydrophobic. In this study, firstly, the contact angle values of Cedar wood have been determined in the tangential and radial direction by dropping them on the surface of the wood material. Then the swelling and shrinkage amounts of the same samples were determined. TS 4084 standard was used to determine the swelling and shrinkage amounts. As a result, shrinkage and swelling amounts of the samples were estimated by using artificial neural network (ANN) and Random Forest (RF) algorithm. In the estimation made by RF and ANN methods, contact angle values were used as input. It has been determined that the predictions made with RF Algorithm give the most accurate results (tangential direction, R2= 0.91, radial direction, R2= 0.97). As a result, it has been determined by RF Algorithm that shrinkage and swelling values of a wood material whose con-tact angle values are known can be better predicted.

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