Comparison of Wood Composite Properties Using Cantilever-Beam Bending

Wood-based composite panels generally are first tested out-of-plane in the primary panel direction followed by the cross panel direction, but rarely edgewise. While most applications use wood-based composites in the flat-wise orientation and only need the out-of-plane properties, there are construction configurations where edgewise properties are needed for improved design configurations. A square cantilever beam was used to determine the apparent stiffness (EI) and modulus of elasticity (E) differences for 3 wood-based composite panel materials. Specimens were cut along the primary panel direction or machine direction (MD) and perpendicular to the primary direction or cross-machine direction (CD). The square specimens were first non-destructively tested oriented in the normal or out-of-plane position, then rotated 90 degrees to measure edgewise properties. The results for a 20 mm thick medium density fiberboard (MDF) showed that the MD properties were 56% higher than the CD properties. The other two composite materials, 12 mm thick particleboard (PB) and 12 mm thick MDF, were essentially the same in the MD or CD directions. For all the materials, the differences between the out-of-plane and the edgewise loading directions showed higher EI and E between 17 to 61%, respectively. The largest difference was found in the PB composite material properties that were between 42 to 61% higher for the out-of-plane properties. For the 12 and 20 mm thick MDF material, inplane properties were 27 to 33% and 17 to 23% higher, respectively. The cantilever bending method was able to quickly assess the difference using the same specimen.