Finite Element Analysis of Wood Materials

Abstract

Continuous quality and reliability improvement of computers as well as their widespread application in design of furniture industry encourage the elaboration of optimization algorithms of furniture constructions, in which rigidity characteristics of the applied joints would be taken under consideration. In the last four decades, the finite element method, FEM, has become the dominant technique used for analyzing physical phenomena in the field of structural, solid and fluid mechanics as well as for the solution of field problems. This paper gives a bibliographical review of the FEM applied in the analysis of furniture products constructed with wood. The following topics are included: Wood as a furniture construction material and its mechanical properties. It is, therefore, reasonable to replace statistical methods of furniture optimization, which have been applied so far, by gradient methods which allow obtaining much more precise results.