Wood is one of the oldest materials used by mankind. Nowadays, it is of significance for a huge variety of applications starting from large span glue lam beams and load carrying components in civil engineering, up to for example music instruments as well as pressure, heat and moisture modified material for new, innovative products.

Apart from the mechanical and aesthetical quality of the material, its eco-friendly features are of high significance. Thus, it can be assumed that the importance will even grow in the future.

In order to be able to provide the desired, optimized components and to develop new applications, deep mechanical knowledge, theoretical modeling and numerical simulation approaches are required with respect to this complex material. Features to be identified are amongst others anisotropic elasticity, ductile plasticity, brittle fracture and time-, moisture- and temperature-dependency. Moreover, the material shows very pronounced features on different length scales so that it even could be described as a composite structure itself instead as a homogeneous material. The features depend on a large number of influence factors like growth conditions and yield a significant amount of scattering with respect to its properties. Due to this really large complexity and manifold dependencies, much research is required in order to be able to understand and to describe wood from the mechanical point of view.

Even though science of forestry is a long established area of research, the mechanical analysis, modeling and simulation of wooden material is a relatively young field. 
In the recent past, quite some effort has been undertaken in order to widen the mechanical
understanding of wooden material from different points of view. Currently, lively and advanced research activities are under way in order to develop a comprehensive knowledge. In the past, wood mechanics was addressed by minisymposia within larger general conferences. The motivation of this proposal is to provide a dedicated forum for wood mechanics taking different methodologies into account and investigating at different length scales, either experimental or theoreticalnumerical.

Basic research as well as application oriented aspects from industry should contribute to the mechanical description of this unique material. The exchange of ideas, methodologies and results in wood mechanics shall be fostered.

Dresden may serve as an ideal location for this gathering of the scientific community in wood mechanics. It has a pronounced and unique profile within Germany in the field of research on forestry and wood. Here, research started about 200 years ago and is currently pursued in the faculties of Mechanical Engineering, Civil Engineering and Forest, Geo and Hydro Sciences. Moreover, the two chairmen of the proposed colloquium are contributing to this research field from different points of view over a long period of more than 10 years. At both institutes, major research groups are working very actively in the described field of mechanical research.