Axial compression behaviour of cross laminated wood-wool panel wallettes

Abstract

This study reported on the investigation of the structural behaviour of wallettes fabricated using wood-wool cement panel (WWCP) under axial compression load. WWCP is a wood based product, which produced by mixing a wood-wool, cement and water and compressed to form a stable panel with dimension of 600 mm × 2400 mm × 50 mm. In the fabrication of wallettes, two parameters were considered which are wallettes without surface plaster denoted as WNP and wallettes with 16 mm thickness of surface plaster on both sides denoted as WP. The 50 mm thickness of WWCP was used and cut into size 300 mm and 600 mm length. The cut panels were then horizontally laid in two layers (each layer consists of two panel strips) at different panel orientation to form a 600 mm × 600 mm wallettes. The front and rear layer were bonded together using 15 mm thick of normal mortar mix at a mixing ratio of 1: 3 (Cement : Fine sand). A total of five wallettes specimens were fabricated and tested under axial compression load test until failure. The testing results indicated that, the application of surface plaster on both side significantly increased the load carrying capacity of wallettes about 31 % compared to the wallettes without surface plaster.