testThe stress–strain curves of boiled cork can distinguish threeclearly distinct regions associated to deformations: a first elas-tic region for a strain of 5–7%; a second region in whichsmall increases in stress lead to large increases in strain upto 60–70%; and a final stage in which a sharp increase instress corresponds to a small strain until the cells collapse(Pereira, 2007; Anjos et al., 2008). In the case of raw cork andradial compression, the three regions are not as clearly distin-guished. Moreover, the shift points and the horizontal plateauare not well defined (Pereira, 2007). The mean stress–straincurve obtained in the compression test of the 57 A and Bpieces (Fig. 4a) shows, in general terms, a first region thatis practically linear up to a strain of 10% for a 0.5 MPa load,a progressive increase in strain of up to approximately 40%