International Journal of Materials Engineering 2015, 5(5): 109-112 DOI: 10.5923/j.ijme.20150505.01 Determination of Density, Shear and Compression Parallel to the Grain Strengths of Pariri (Pouteria sp.), Brazilian Native Wood Specie Diego Henrique de Almeida 1,* , Eduardo Chahud 2 , Tiago Hendrigo de Almeida 3 , André Luís Christoforo 4 , Luiz Antônio Melgaço Nunes Branco 2 , Francisco Antonio Rocco Lahr 5 1 Pitágoras Faculty, Department of Engineering, Poços de Caldas Campus, Poços de Caldas, Brazil 2 Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, FUMEC University, Belo Horizonte, Brazil 3 Department of Materials Engineering (SMM), Engineering School of São Carlos (EESC), São Paulo University (USP), São Carlos, Brazil 4 Centre for Innovation and Technology in Composites (CITeC), Department of Civil Engineering (DECiv), Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar), São Carlos, Brazil 5 Department of Structures Engineering (SET), Engineering School of São Carlos (EESC), São Paulo University (USP), São Carlos, Brazil Abstract Brazil is one of the countries with the largest reserves of tropical forests. Their rational use ensures sustainability in actions developed by extractive companies. However, for this, to know wood properties of species harvested from these reserves is very important. This research aims to the determination of strength in compression parallel to grain; shear strength and density for (Pouteria sp.), vulgarly called Pariri, a wood from a Northern Brazilian legal reserve. Tests were carried out in accordance with Brazilian standard ABNT NBR 7190: 1997. Results obtained in this study permit to concluded that Pariri Wood presents compatible physical and mechanical properties for use in structural purposes. Keywords Compression parallel strength, Shear parallel strength, Density, Wood 1. Introduction The use of wood in construction is a practice carried out for many years, since humanity needed to protection, to store food, to overcome natural obstacles, among other objectives. For many centuries, also in Brazil, wood has been applied without any quality control in building structures, being employed, often wrong way, favoring the rotting of timber structural elements and/or the ruin of these structures. Brazil is a country with a large proportion of using wood from native trees to solve building problems, including structures for several purposes. The first buildings held in the country were made with high performance wood, extracted from major forest regions, such as the Amazon Tropical Forest and the Atlantic Forest [1-3]. For the sustainable use of native tropical species, it is fundamentally important establish certificate forest areas, and control the quality of different wood industrialization processes. Certification of production process in which native woods are employed provides assurance of sustainability in this sector [4]. The adequate knowledge of wood properties, whether * Corresponding author: diegoestruturas@gmail.com (Diego Henrique de Almeida) Published online at http://journal.sapub.org/ijme Copyright © 2015 Scientific & Academic Publishing. All Rights Reserved physical or mechanical, is essential to better direct their use, for example, to timber structures construction [5-8]. Brazilian Standard ABNT NBR 7190:1997 "Design of Timber Structures" [9], in its Annex B, provides guidelines in terms of test methods to determine physical and mechanical properties of native and exotic species. Furthermore, in this Code, Annex E presents values of strength, stiffness and density for several of these wood species. Density is a basic physical property because its values permit to determine the own weight of the structure and enables to proper estimation of several wood mechanical properties. In general, a wood with higher density will present values of mechanical properties higher when compared with wood species with lower density [10]. Brazilian standard adopts strength in compression parallel to grain as reference mechanical property, in timber structures design. Based on it, other values of strength when wood bars are subjected to different solicitations and angles related to the grain can be estimated [11-15]. Shear strength parallel to grain is also an important parameter for defining use of wood for structural purposes [16]. In this context, the research aims to the experimental determination of density, strength in compression parallel to grain and shear strength parallel to grain of a Brazilian native wood specie called Pariri (Pouteria sp.), only recently used