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Our objective is to apply an understanding of the modes of failure and structural biology to substantially reduce the comminution energy required to produce bioenergy feedstocks. This paper explores the modes of failure for wood materials subject to crushing forces and how they could be used to develop a mathematical model of crushing forces for a round roller acting on a round log. Our hypothesis is that crushing or roller-splitting is a low-energy and effective method to reduce the thickness of round logs and change the resulting shape for subsequent processing. Modes of failure during crushing suggest that a mathematical model could be developed to estimate required crushing forces and energy for round logs. Such a model has been called for since early work by the USDA Forest Products Laboratory and Tennessee Valley Authority more than 30 years ago. A model was developed by the authors and experimentally validated for the case of a round roller compressing a round log.