Oliver Hudson

Novel wood-polymer composites for sustainable building

Oliver worked as part of a collaborative project with the Departments of Chemistry and Architecture to develop novel wood composites for use as sustainable, structural, building materials. The project had the objective of the creation and utilisation of innovative timber impregnation technologies that lead to low energy methods for improving the structural properties of fast growing, porous woods while adding additional benefits such as increased material utilization, reduced processing requirement, reduced in-situ maintenance requirement and an ecologically efficient end of
life disposal. His work is currently focused on accurately quantifying the embedded energy differential across virgin, engineered and modified woods that meet structural grades, the mechanical testing of UK grown species that are impregnated in order to improve their structural properties and the development of both modified and un-modified short rotation coppice (SRC) composite beams.

Oliver successfully defended his PhD thesis in 2012.