In general, the aim of the foundation is to promote scientific research on structural wood. In particular, the objective is to contribute to the development of fundamental theory. The starting point hereby is that there is not anything that cannot be explained theoretically. A test program always should be based on the testing of a theory. Else the test results have no meaning and are not able to provide reliable design rules. Because mostly these rules are still wrongly based on arbitrary curve fitting of theoretically meaningless experimental data, it is a main task of the DWSF to explain these data theoretically. As shown in all publications of the DWSF, it then is possible to explain the apparent contrary results of the different institutes. A further task is to verify the yet unmeasured predictions of the developed theory, making it possible to prevent the dangerous and uneconomical situations that are not foreseen by the empirical rules. Examples of this are also given in all contributions of the DWSF.

As proponents of the scientific method, the foundation has organized post-graduate courses and student excursions in co-operation with TU-Delft. Further results are published in proceedings of international congresses and committees as IUFRO, -RILEM, COST and CIB-W18. In this light, the Dutch timber building code was written (see last three reports of van der Put’s publications list for the background) and work was done for the Euro-Code. Also within this framework, DWSF has recently opened this website where publications can be freely downloaded and discussed.

The foundation is non-profit and its income comes from both contract research and donations.