Experimental study on the flexural behavior of composite shorea plywood – pine OSB floor panel

Abstract

The use of engineered wood products nowadays become more common due to the limitations of solid wood to meet the need for larger dimension and higher strength of wood as structural members. Composite wood floor panel consisted of plywood on the outer (surface) layers and oriented strand board (OSB) as inner (core) layer is an example of engineered wood products. In this study, the 18-mm-thick plywood is made of meranti (shorea) and the 15-mm-thick OSB is made of pine. The flexural behavior of such panel in terms of flexural strength, ductility, flexural rigidity, and mode of failure is studied experimentally. The dimension of each panel specimen is 1200 mm x 400 mm x 51 mm. To study the effect of plywood orientation on the flexural behavior of the panel, two different plywood orientations have been tested. Type A panel has fiber direction of the outermost layers of plywood parallel to the longitudinal direction of the panel while type B panel has fiber direction of the outermost layers of plywood perpendicular to the longitudinal direction of the panel. Three identical specimens for each panel type have been tested by third point loading until failure occurred. Test results show that for type A panel, the average flexural strength, the average ductility, and the average flexural rigidity are 3.58 kNm, 2.42, and 17.2 kNm2, respectively. For type B panel, those averages are 3.82 kNm, 1.50, and 25.35 kNm2. It can be concluded that if strength and stiffness are the main concern, type B panel is better than type A panel. Mode of failure observed in the experiment on type A panel is generally crack on the tension side of the panel, while the mode of failure of type B panel in general is shear failure in the OSB.