Hybrid wood-glass and wood-jute-glass laminates manufactured by vacuum infusion

Abstract

Hybrid unidirectional wood-jute laminates manufactured by the vacuum infusion processing (VIP) may present some limitations, including high incidence of delamination failures, low interfacial adhesive strength and low transverse mechanical strength. This study proposes a way to overcome these issues by manufacturing wood-glass and wood-jute-glass laminates by VIP. Pine wood veneers, jute nonwoven fabrics, glass mats and a polyester resin were employed in the here studied five-layer laminates. Apparent density, compressive, longitudinal flexural, transverse flexural, short beam testing, morphology and water absorption were the characterization analyses. As expected, the higher the number of glass layers, the higher the apparent density (up to 30%), the thinner the laminates, the closer the longitudinal and transverse mechanical properties and the smaller the water uptake levels. Based on increases of up to 70% in short beam strength, the wood-glass interface bonding was more qualified than the wood-jute one. Among all laminates, those ones with glass mats as faces showed higher longitudinal and transverse flexural properties. Besides, the higher the number of jute layers, the higher the void content.