Effect of Moisture on Bending and Breaking Resistance of Commercial Oriented Strandboards

This is a short addendum to an earlier paper (Wu and Suchsland 1997) on bending resistance (E·I) and breaking resistance (R·S) of commercial oriented strandboard (OSB). It is shown that for a moisture content (MC) change from 4 to 24%, the combined effect of increased MC and thickness swelling led to an average E·I loss of 37% in the parallel direction and 51% in the perpendicular direction; and to an average R·S loss of 31% in the parallel direction and 43% in the perpendicular direction. Predictive equations expressing E·I and R·S as functions of moisture content were established for various products