New generation of tools for wood cutting industry

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Wood is a readily available heterogeneous material with plenty of varieties used in furniture, packing, building constructions, beam flashings, flooring, and many other applications. Considering the importance of forest industry in Canada (205,000 jobs and $33B in exports, 2019 data) wood cutting occupies a key role in this industry. Specifically, according to the government of Canada's 2020 report on the 'state of Canada's forests' more than 158 million cubic meters of industrial round wood has been harvested in 2018 in Canada. One of the major challenges faced by industry is the rapid deterioration of the cutting tool, which significantly reduces the surface quality of the cut wood, increases wood waste, and leads to significant increase of the number of cut trees for the same amount of processed wood. Therefore, the use of high-performance long-lasting tools will have significant environmental (cutting less trees for the same total production) and economic (tool replacement, low quality wood production, etc.) impacts for Canada. However, producing high-performance long-lasting cutting tools is a multi-faceted complex scientific and technological problem. The goal of the proposed 4-year project is to better understand the fundamental interactions between alloy composition, heat treatment parameters, surface preparation, and coating characteristics on the performance of wood cutting tools with the view to develop the next generation of high-performance wood cutting tools.