FAST ESTIMATION OF WOOD ELASTIC CONSTANTS USING LEAST-SQUARES

Mechanical properties of materials represent, among others, one of the most relevant topics in musical acoustics. Such features can be used to better understand the behaviour of musical instruments or to evaluate the impact of design interventions, and build accurate physical models. In this regard, this paper aims to introduce an accessible procedure to estimate the elastic constants of wood using a thin plate. Compared to previous methods in the literature, the inverse problem is here formulated linearly in the rigidity constants, thus allowing a unique solution via a matrix inverse, and using a least-squares formulation. The reliability of the method is numerically proven in a number of examples.