Experimental testing of balsa wood

In all our years of higher education, never have we experienced working in a state-of- the-art laboratory without constraints. This time however we were given a chance to stimulate our curiosities at the Faculty of Mechanics under the supervision of Dr.ing. Mircea Cristian Dudescu.

Our goal being to evaluate the mechanical properties of balsa wood, so that we are able to model our structure with a higher precision, this way we can create a structure that behaves similarly to the real one. Firstly we created a number of test specimens. Our supervisor suggested taking a look into the international standards to determine their shape and dimensions. The actual testing was made using 2 methods : traction test and static bending test, on more than 200 specimens.