The reduction in the availability the native lumber species and its effects on the economy, associated to the invigoration of the concepts of environmental preservation created the necessity of the development of viable alternatives for rational use of reforestation species. One of the options is the accomplishment of visual grading of the pieces. Research works verified the adaptation of the rules of visual grading of Southern Pine Inspection Bureau (SPIB) of the USA for the Brazilian lumber Pinus, presenting a proposal to normalize the process of visual grading of this lumber. In this classification, the most important aspects are the presence of knots, the inclination of the grain in relation of the axis of the piece and the density of growth rings. Therefore, the current work presents an experimental study consisting of a visual grading and determination of the stress strength of 85 Pinus spp pieces and a theoretical study that presents an equation to establish the average strength strain of structural pieces according to the visual grading. With this work, it was possible to observe the influence of the knots and growth rings in stress strength of the analyzed pieces.
Visual grading; stress strength; Pinus
