The primary objective of our research was to determine the water absorption
and diffusion coefficient of three varieties of wood. Knowledge of moisture
uptake and transport properties are essential for predicting the moisture content.
The obtained results are fitted on four kinds of models to describe the kinetics: a
diffusion model for an arbitrary geometry material and three empirical equations.
Meanwhile, a new model, based on the viscoelastic properties, was developed to
describe the water absorption kinetics of wood. The other objective of our
research was to compare experimentally the determined absorption times and
moisture content gradients to those calculated by the theoretical and empirical
models.