JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #111 - March 2017 - Special JEC World - 92

CONSTRUCTlON
nano-materials

"l am re-engineering nature"
Although wood has long been considered as a traditional material not
particularly associated with innovation, it could well become the material of
the twenty-first century.

n building and construction, if the nineteenth century was the age of iron, the
twentieth century was the age of concrete,
and the twenty-first century will be the age of
wood.
Wood is by its very nature the only renewable construction material, and one that requires very little energy to produce, convert
and use. According to current economic and
environmental forecasts, it is on its way to
becoming the preferred construction material of the twenty-first century. The building
and construction sector is currently a major
source of greenhouse gas emissions: worldwide, it emits 2.4 billion metric tons of C02
equivalent each year, or equivalent to all vehicles on the planet's roads. What is more,
urbanization will require a drastic increase in
the number of dwellings in the years to come.
The United Nations estimates that city populations are increasing by 180,000 people per
day, so accommodating the growing urban
population will require building the equivalent of seven cities the size of Paris or 23 cities

the size of Boston, worldwide and each year.
Consequently, it is of vital importance to start
developing new building materials and techniques to build higher, faster, and more durably, by reinventing our natural heritage in order
to address the unprecedented environmental
challenges that await us.
Wood has been omnipresent in everyday objects and in human habitations for thousands
of years. It is an essential material, a familiar
symbol of the symbiosis between man and
Nature. Although it has long been considered
as a traditional material not particularly associated with innovation, it could well become the
material of the twenty-first century.
For building purposes in post-hydrocarbon
societies that are developing new, biosourced
economies, wood is an attractive material on
a number of accounts. It is 100% renewable. It
prolongs the life cycle of the CO2 stored within
its structure and helps give buildings a smaller carbon footprint. Its large-scale use would
open up definite economic and environmental
opportunities. However, traditional wood also
has a number of drawbacks: besides being vulnerable to fire, humidity and insects, it has limited structural strength, is completely opaque,

Translucent
beech sample,
cross section

jec composites magazine / No111 March 2017

Timothée Boitouzet, Woodoo

and its high maintenance cost restricts the
scope of its use.
One of the most high-performance
materials of the future
Woodoo does away with these limitations by
reconstructing the organic structure of the
wood at the molecular scale to transform it
into one of the most high-performance materials of the future.
Created and optimized by Mother Nature
over 420 million years, wood has a veritable
organizational intelligence at the micrometric and nanometric scale. We can take advantage of this "intelligence" to develop a new
category of composites: a natural material
that is "augmented" by technology. The current definition of a composite is a plastic reinforced with fibres to improve the mechanical properties. For example, we speak more
precisely of organic-matrix composite materials, consisting of a reinforcement (short or
long fibres, fabric) and a matrix (thermoset
or thermoplastic resin). The Woodoo innovation proposes to re-engineer the wood

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #111 - March 2017 - Special JEC World