Agricultural Reviews
  • Year: 2024
  • Volume: 45
  • Issue: 4

Techniques to Measure Moisture Content in Timber: A Review and Proposal for Inter-digital Sensing

  • Author:
  • B.A. Oommen1,2,*, J. Philip1,2
  • Total Page Count: 10
  • Page Number: 590 to 599

1Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Amal Jyothi College of Engineering, Kanjirappally, Kottayam-686 518, Kerala, India

2APJ Abdul Kalam Technological University, Thiruvananthapuram-695 016, Kerala, India

*Corresponding Author: B.A. Oommen, Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Amal Jyothi College of Engineering, Kanjirappally, Kottayam-686 518, Kerala, India, Email: binuao@gmail.com

Online Published on 03 June, 2025.

Abstract

Timber is a commonly used building material which is porous in nature, continuously maintaining equality with relative humidity (RH) and temperature of the atmosphere in the immediate vicinity. Moisture content influences several performance parameters like timber durability, immunity to deterioration etc. Several procedures have been attempted which enables to measure the moisture contents in timber consistently and rather accurately. This review provides the technical details of the methodologies attempted so far to estimate moisture contents in timber specimens. The proposed inter-digital sensing was carried out at Department of Instrumentation, CUSAT during 2019-2020. Implementation of a method employing a spiral inter-digital capacitive sensor, which is low in cost and non-invasive in nature, is presented and discussed.

Keywords

Capacitive sensing, Inter-digital transducers, Moisture measurement methods, Timber moisture