In softwood material, the coupling between mechanical loading and hydric state is known as the mechanosorptive effect. However, the coupling with viscoelastic effect remains unclear so far, especially when the loading is controlled by strain. In this context, the present paper is focused on the process of creation and recovery of 'hygrolock' behaviour, i.e. a stress locking effect which occurs in a phase of drying under load. For this purpose, several relaxation tests were first performed on small-scale silver fir specimens in order to express the relaxation function in terms of the ambient humidity. Then, two mechanosorptive tests were carried out in order to induce hygrolock stresses in the same sample loaded in sustained strain condition, and subjected to cyclically varying humidity. Based on the assumption of stress partition, the analysis of the test results clearly shows the existence of a hygrolock stress. From these experimental evidences, a law is finally proposed to describe the evolution of the hygrolock stress in terms of the hydric state of the softwood material.Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (
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