Study of different spruce strands and their effect on the properties of wood-cement composites

Abstract

Wood-wool cement boards (WWCB) are a type of composite made of softwood strands (e.g. spruce wood) and cement (e.g. white cement) and have been extensively used for decades in many applications thanks to their good thermal and acoustical properties. Recently, some problems have been noticed during the manufacture of these composites: When the wood has poor quality, a lot of problems occur such as important delay of the cement hydration or also low flexural strength of the composites. Besides, the quality of the wood is very hard to assess, especially since a very slight and almost no noticeable difference between two types of wood can have a significant effect on the final composite. This study focuses on the characterization of two types of spruce woods, harvested from the same forest (Hungary) at the same time, but with very different performances. The objective is to understand which parameters affect the wood and therefore, the properties of the wood-cement composites.