{"id":29249,"date":"2025-10-13T06:37:45","date_gmt":"2025-10-12T20:37:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/?p=29249"},"modified":"2025-10-13T06:37:47","modified_gmt":"2025-10-12T20:37:47","slug":"ai-vibration-sensors-could-deliver-real%e2%80%91time-moisture-monitoring-for-sawmills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/ai-vibration-sensors-could-deliver-real%e2%80%91time-moisture-monitoring-for-sawmills\/","title":{"rendered":"AI Vibration Sensors Could Deliver Real\u2011Time Moisture Monitoring for Sawmills"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Researchers have shown that a vibration sensor paired with machine learning can measure timber moisture with near\u2011lab accuracy, offering a fast, non\u2011destructive alternative that could transform quality control in sawmills and panel lines. If factory trials confirm the results, sawmills could gain a low\u2011cost, contactless system that delivers near\u2011lab moisture readings in real time, cutting waste and improving product consistency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The paper, Non\u2011destructive wood moisture prediction using vibration signals and XGBoost,<\/a><\/em> published by researchers at China’s Nanjing Forestry University, recorded tiny vibrations from Populus tomentosa boards, extracted time\u2011 and frequency\u2011domain features from accelerometer signals, and trained an XGBoost regression model to identify which vibration features predict moisture content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Click here to download the research<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Moisture alters density, stiffness and internal damping, leaving distinct fingerprints in a board\u2019s vibration. The team filtered raw data, pulled out spectral and temporal metrics, and compared several regression algorithms. XGBoost outperformed gradient boosting, random forest, and support vector regression, and generalised well on held-out samples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Industry implications are immediate. Oven\u2011dry tests remain the gold standard but are slow and destructive, while many inline alternatives are expensive or sensitive to production noise. A vibration\u2011based system could provide contactless, board\u2011by\u2011board moisture estimates at production speed, enabling tighter kiln control, fewer rejects and more consistent engineered wood products, with lower capital and maintenance costs than some optical or radio\u2011frequency systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"1<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The study was carried out in controlled laboratory conditions using uniform poplar samples, so wider adoption will require further validation. Models must be tested and recalibrated across species, board sizes and surface conditions, and sensor hardware must be hardened for mill environments. Recalibration or transfer\u2011learning strategies will likely be necessary to retain accuracy across diverse timbers and geometries. If factory trials validate the lab findings, vibration sensing combined with explainable machine learning could become a practical, low\u2011cost tool for real\u2011time moisture control that boosts yield, cuts rejects and raises product consistency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more information<\/strong>: Jiawen Shi, Jiawei Zhang, Aoyun Li, Yongqi Liu, Bin Na,
Vibration-based non-destructive prediction of wood moisture content using machine learning models, Microchemical Journal, Volume 218, 2025, 115679, ISSN 0026-265X, https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1016\/j.microc.2025.115679.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Researchers have shown that a vibration sensor paired with machine learning can measure timber moisture with near\u2011lab accuracy, offering a fast, non\u2011destructive alternative that could transform quality control in sawmills and panel lines. If factory trials confirm the results, sawmills could gain a low\u2011cost, contactless system that delivers near\u2011lab moisture readings in real time, cutting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29251,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_wpscppro_dont_share_socialmedia":false,"_wpscppro_custom_social_share_image":0,"_facebook_share_type":"default","_twitter_share_type":"default","_linkedin_share_type":"default","_pinterest_share_type":"default","_linkedin_share_type_page":"","_instagram_share_type":"default","_medium_share_type":"default","_threads_share_type":"default","_google_business_share_type":"default","_selected_social_profile":[],"_wpsp_enable_custom_social_template":false,"_wpsp_social_scheduling":{"enabled":false,"datetime":null,"platforms":[],"status":"template_only","dateOption":"today","timeOption":"now","customDays":"","customHours":"","customDate":"","customTime":"","schedulingType":"absolute"},"_wpsp_active_default_template":true},"categories":[52,46,115],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[70],"class_list":{"0":"post-29249","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-asia","8":"category-industry","9":"category-preservation"},"authors":[{"term_id":70,"user_id":2,"is_guest":0,"slug":"jason","display_name":"Jason Ross","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/J-Ross-headshot.jpeg","url2x":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/J-Ross-headshot.jpeg"},"0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29249"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29253,"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29249\/revisions\/29253"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29249"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=29249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}