Hygroexpansivity of anisotropic sheets

Dimensional instability, more particularly its component hygroexpansivity, may cause problems in process or end-use situations in which paper or board is in contact with water or subject to changes in ambient relative humidity. Misregistration in printing, curl during copying and calender wrinkles are examples of such defects. In this paper, the in-plane hygroexpansivity of oriented laboratory sheets with different pulps and dried both freely and under restraint is studied. A linear relationship between the drying shrinkage and hygroexpansion coefficient of freely dried laboratory sheets having different fiber orientation anisotropies, was observed. Regardless of both the measurement direct…