Steam explosion pretreatment before lumber drying may increase the lumber drying rate.In the experiment conducted by the authors,oak lumber flooring material was pretreated by steam explosion at a pressure of 0.25,0.40 and 0.55 MPa,respectively.Then the lumber was dried and compared with untreated oak lumber.The results showed that the drying rate was increased by 13.6%,27.3% and 36.4% after the steam explosion pretreatments.With the given steam pressures,the strength of the oak lumber did not decrease.