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Updated: Apr 5, 2026

Stress Distribution During Cold Compression of Rocks and Mineral Aggregates Using Synchrotron-based X-Ray Diffraction
Published on: May 20, 2018
Avalanches in Wood Compression
T Mäkinen1, A Miksic1, M Ovaska1
1COMP Center of Excellence, Department of Applied Physics, Aalto University, P.O. Box 11100, 00076 Aalto, Espoo, Finland.
Abstract:
Wood is a multiscale material exhibiting a complex viscoplastic response. We study avalanches in small wood samples in compression. "Woodquakes" measured by acoustic emission are surprisingly similar to earthquakes and crackling noise in rocks and laboratory tests on brittle materials. Both the distributions of event energies and of waiting (silent) times follow power laws. The stress-strain response exhibits clear signatures of localization of deformation to "weak spots" or softwood layers, as identified using digital image correlation. Even though material structure-dependent localization takes place, the avalanche behavior remains scale-free.
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