Scientists at the University of Maine’s Advanced Engineered Wood Composites Center (AEWC) have developed a shear wall product able to endure the high stress of hurricane conditions, a panel that is 2-3 times stronger than those presently on the market.

The path the AEWC took in creating the new product is one they have travelled more than a few times, and shows both the ingenuity of those in the lab and the potential of wood composites, a field that hopes to make a home here in Greenville. Dr. Habib Dagher, the AEWC’s director and an energetic, knowledgeable ambassador for wood composite technology, told the crowd at a recent NREC event in Greenville that the lab found wall performance to be directly related to the number of nails pounded into its perimeter.

Often, builders would not put enough nails through a panel to reinforce it against high winds. Even with a suitable number of nails, Dagher said, boards could be pulled from their place as the vicious gusts rip the wood from the nail. In order to strengthen the board where it mattered most, the lab placed a rim of fiberglass along the perimeter of the panel. With high winds accounting for the bulk of the $50 billion in damages caused by disasters each year, it is a development that has an impact beyond peace of mind.

“That nail is not going to rip through the panel,” said Dagher. “Even if they miss the number of nails, you are still doing pretty well.”

It is this kind of value-added, problem-solving approach that is repeated time and time again at the AEWC, which was founded in 1995 to be a world-class research center and is now just that, a 47,000-square-foot laboratory housing 25 full-tme researchers and staff and 100 students, from freshmen to Ph.D. candidates, all doing work considered cutting edge in their field. The AEWC operates at the junction of science, education and commerce, working with partners both public and private to develop ideas into products for eventual commercialization. Dagher describes it as a “one-stop shop” for development of composite technologies, where a thought is hashed out into a prototype, which is then put through the lab’s rigorous testing procedures.

If the real world has it to dish out, the AEWC can equal or surpass it in its lab. They have equipment to test for the effects of heat and pressure. They can test for chemical and impact resistance. They can freeze a product or set it on fire, or submit it to water and UV light. After constructing a bridge from composite material, they can put 50 years worth of traffic over it in two weeks time. For what the eye cannot see, they have an advanced microscopy lab that peers into the bonds holding the material together.

“That is what we do,” said Dagher. “We design, manufacture and torture new products.”

Hopefully, when the products pass the grueling tests -- and can be made in a cost-effective manner -- they can taken to the market by way of an entrepreneur and a manufacturing center like the Greenville Business Incubator.

The AEWC has developed many products in this way, and Dagher brought samples of many of these materials. Oriented Strand and Delta Strand Lumber operate under the same philosophy: take low-grade wood, rid it of its impurities, and you are left with a product far stronger than regular lumber and more valuable than its original form.

For Delta Strand, one of the lab’s newer developments, pulpwood-grade sticks with triangular cross-sections are cut then realigned and bonded, making lumber for structural framing that is 2-3 times stronger than solid wood.

Dagher said the material could be used for telephone poles and signage. While more expensive than what is now used, less material is needed because the pole could be kept hollow. Also, the material will last much longer than regular wood; it is resistant to the elements and organic matter like bacteria cannot live inside of it.

“All poles rot from the inside,” said Dagher “With this technology, there is no inside.”

The AEWC has also developed a fiberglass reinforcement to be bonded with wood, a tricky endeavor considering wood swells and contracts depending on conditions, and fiberglass ordinarily does not. “Finding a material to do that was the trick to getting the patent,” said Dagher.

Another material combines sawdust with thermoplastic resin (think ground soda bottles) to make a chemical-free product that does not rot and is as strong as steel.

Structures throughout the state already use materials developed at the AEWC, including bridges in Sangerville, West Seboeis and Medway, and a pier in Milbridge. The Town of Greenville is now working on using the material during the Junction Wharf renovation.

It is hoped that a product -- or products -- developed at the AEWC can be manufactured and marketed from the Greenville Business Incubator.

Dagher is optimistic about the future of Greenville as a center for wood composite manufacturing. Developments in Sanford, Greenville’s sister in wood composite development with its own incubator already up and running, show the model can work, and though a lot of sweat is yet to be poured into the project, the circumstances are right, he said, someone just needs to exploit them.

“The key to success up here will be to find the entrepreneurs and the investors,” he said after his presentation. “The technology is there.”
"This content originally appeared as a copyrighted article in the Moosehead Messenger and is used here with permission."