Probing measurements of the Meyer hardness index of radial, tangential and cross section of various types of wood

Abstract

The Meyer index is a power exponent appearing in Meyer hardness power law, which describes the dependence of the indenting force on the diameter of the indentation caused by the ball (or alternatively a cylinder). A perfectly plastic material should have a Meyer hardness index of 2 and a perfectly elastic material of 3. Previous research by the author and co-workers indicated that the Meyer index of beech wood is 2.5 and for metals aluminum 2.25, copper 2.0. This gave rise to the hypothesis that the hardness index of each wood is about 2.5. It was decided to verify this hypothesis for different types of wood, different anatomical cross-sectional directions. Research on such diversity must therefore be of a probing nature. Nevertheless, these probing measurements indicate that different types of wood in given sectional planes have similar Meyer indexes, but in each section it is a different value. The measured mean value in the radial section was 2.41, in the tangential section 2.28 and in the cross section 1.98. Thus, the initial hypothesis of the value 2.5 was confirmed only for the radial section, and for the tangential and cross sections, new values of 2.25 and 2.0 were hypothesized. Only the extreme values of the Meyer indexes (on the radial and cross section) turned out to be statistically significantly different.