Wood-based corrugated core sandwich panels manufactured using a wooden mold

Abstract

A wooden matched-die mold was manufactured to develop wood-based corrugated panels. Wood veneers brushed with resin were cold pressed between the mold halves and formed into a corrugated geometry. The corrugated panels were used as a core and bonded to flat veneer-based facesheets to develop sandwich panels. The whole manufacturing process involved a cold-forming technique that allowed panels to be produced with no heat. Specimens cut from both corrugated and sandwich panels were submitted to a four-point bending test to evaluate their structural performance. Adopting the same number of layers used to make the sandwich panels, flat panels were fabricated and tested to find the effect of this corrugated geometry and cold-forming process on the load-carrying capacity of the sandwich structures. A comparison with flat panels made with the same stacking of veneers showed an increase of 272% of the bending stiffness of the sandwich panels, which is known as the sandwich effect. Comparison between the bending results of the panels developed in this study with those manufactured using thermoset resin and hot-pressing technique indicated that the cold-forming process using the wooden mold is an effective and inexpensive method to develop wood-based corrugated sandwich panels.