Expertise Wanted
- Research group with experience in coating formulation, polymer chemistry, lignocellulosic materials, or bio-based polymers
- Experts in architecture, building physics, wood construction, and sustainable design
Research Project Idea
The main aim of the project is to discover renewable materials or compounds for enhancing the long-term durability of timber products.
The motivation for the work is in promotion of timber in construction of buildings enabled by safe, high performing, and renewable coatings and treatments. The materials utilized in buildings and other constructs are exposed to varying environmental stresses depending on their location, lifetime, maintenance etc. Wood is a long-lasting material whose life cycle should be considered critically, and lifetime in use should be extended to be as long as possible. Maintaining the functionality, safety, and aesthetics of wood in a building requires treatment of the wooden surfaces that prevent unwanted physical, chemical or biological changes depending on the exposure they are subjected to also considering the related regulations.
A possible source for high-performing functional components for enhancing the endurance of timber are side stream biomasses, such as wood barks, since they contain chemicals and functionalities that play a role in enabling the long lifetime of trees. HAMK’s main activities in the project relate to extraction and processing of functional components from biomasses and testing the performance of the coated or otherwise treated wooden specimens or products. We have capability to carry out accelerated weathering studies and to build testing set-ups with various climate scenarios. The size scale for studied samples varies from small pieces to large elements.
Background and Expertise
Päivi Laaksonen works as a Principal Research Scientist at HAMK and is responsible for the Materials research area at HAMK Tech, as well as leads the Long-Term Durability Research Group. Laaksonen obtained a PhD in physical chemistry in 2008 and has published 55 papers that have been cited 2303 times (H-index 23).
ORCID ID: 0000-0003-2029-5275