The demand for engineered wood products (EWPs) continues to rise internationally. However, for some important Australian commercial timbers such as plantation grown southern pine and native forest sourced spotted gum, a major impediment to achieving commercially viable EWP production is difficulties experienced in gluing – particularly for sawn laminate based EWPs such as glulam. Wettability and permeability have a major influence on wood adhesion. This study investigated the efficacy of different surface machining preparations on the wettability and permeability of southern pine and spotted gum. For both species, planing resulted in poor wettability, whereas face milling and sanding treatments post-planing improved wettability. Wettability increased in southern pine earlywood compared to latewood; and wettability decreased for both species with increased time post-surface machining. Planing resulted in the highest permeability for southern pine but the lowest permeability for spotted gum. Face milling resulted in higher permeability compared to sanding treatments.

Fatigue crack is an important rotor fault, which can lead to catastrophic failure if undetected properly and in time. Study and Investigation of dynamics of cracked shafts are continuing since last four decades. Some review papers were also published during this period. The aim of this paper is to present a review on recent studies and investigations done on cracked rotor. It is not the intention of the authors to provide all literatures related with the cracked rotor. However, the main emphasis is to provide all the methodologies adopted by various researchers to investigate a cracked rotor. The paper incorporates a candid commentary on various methodologies. The paper further deals an extended Lagrangian formulation to investigate dynamics of cracked rotor.

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Drying has a major impact on the viability of sawn timber production, particularly through its influence on productivity, energy usage, and product quality. Traditionally, plantation-grown southern pine structural grade timber from Australia has been dried using high temperature (≥ 180 °C) conventional batch kilns. However, the Australian industry is showing increasing interest in continuous drying kilns because of reported cost savings and potential improvements in product quality. This study investigated the differences between continuous drying and conventional drying schedules on the radial permeability, wettability, gluability, and treatability of southern pine timber from Queensland plantations. The high temperature drying resulted in significantly lower liquid permeability compared to low temperature drying; however, there were no significant differences between drying schedules for gas permeability. For combined wood surface and core data, there were no significant differences in liquid permeability between low temperature drying and continuous drying or between continuous drying and high temperature drying schedules. For earlywood after surface machining, continuous drying resulted in the greatest wettability (based on K-values), whereas for latewood after surface machining, low temperature drying produced the greatest wettability. Earlywood had greater wettability compared to latewood. Continuous drying resulted in better gluability and treatability compared to conventional drying schedules.

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The architecture of microporous nanostructured copper was surface engineered by an improvised conventional electrodeposition technique enabled with a dynamic hydrogen template over a copper substrate. The dependency of the copper architecture on the electrochemical parameters, the current density, and the deposition time are studied in detail. Single-step electrodeposition resulted in the formation of a fragile microporous nanostructure over the bare copper substrate. Focusing on structural stability, a two-step electrodeposition was carried out to make the copper architecture competitive in an adverse environment. Due to the grain growth in two-step electrodeposition, the structural stability was visibly enhanced, and the microporous nanostructure remained intact. The interaction of the microporous nanostructure with water was evaluated by measuring the contact angle, exhibiting both superhydrophobicity and superhydrophilicity.

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