The shrinkage in wood can be analyzed under the point of view of the influence on stresses, strains and displacements present in the structures. Thus, the shrinkage can be computed as parcel in the stress-strain relationship, considering in this analysis a piece of wood in form of cylindrical stem without external forces, in a system of cylindrical coordinates. Due to the radial symmetry, the field of displacements is function of radius and the angular displacement is null. Considering also the longitudinal strain is constant, the strains are written in function of the reduced strain coefficients and an associate coefficient denominated byk, presented by Lekhnitskii, which depend on the material elastic properties. With this, the differential equation that conducts this problem is function of the coefficients of strain and consequently of the shrinkage. As example of the use of the regent equation and consequently determination of stresses in the radial and tangential directions it was used the elastic coefficients of the wood species Pinus caribaea obtained in auxiliary experimental procedure. In general, the results indicated the importance of verifying the influence of the shrinkage in the of radial and tangential stress state and also in displacements of the wood pieces.
Shrinkage; Wood; Stresses; Elastic Properties; Lekhnitskii´s Reduced Elastic Coefficients
