EVOLUTION OF LIGHTWEIGHT WOOD COMPOSITES

Lightweight boards and beams in the wood-based construction and furniture industry are not a new topic. The density reduction of panels using sandwich structure with light cores was confirmed by users like doors or mobile homes more than three decades ago. Today many ways to attain a lighter wooden structure are on offer, partially in industrial application. The first one is the use of light-weight wood species like balsa, lime, pine from southern hemisphere plantations etc. limited by the availability, strength properties, gluability and so on. A second one is the sandwich structure made from hard faces like thick veneer, thin plywood, particleboard or high density thin fiberboard and cores made from honeycomb paper, very light wood species or foams like the polystyrene one. A third way to produce a light structure is to reduce the core drastically, using predesigned skeletons with special shapes and connections to the faces. The engines for these developments are on the one hand the fast growing market of knockdown furniture and on the other hand the increasing costs for energy and raw materials. Additional factors that make weight saving a primary economical objective for most producers are transportation costs, easier handling and higher acceptance among the end users. Moreover, customers demand more for ergonomical solutions regarding packaging. Many patents were generated by researchers and developers for new one-stage production processes for sandwich panels with wood- and impregnated paper-based facings made from veneers, particles or fibres and a core consisting of expandable foams, particles or embedded hard skeletons. These ideas or prototypes could be integrated in existing continuous pressing lines for wood based panels keeping some of the advantages of the continuous production technique in matters of efficiency. Some of the challenges of the light weight wooden structure are the connection in half or final parts, resistance to water, moisture, temperature and fire, and maybe last but not least the recyclability due to the mixture of different materials like foams, plastics etc