Improving the economic viability and flexural strength performance of dowel laminated Casuarina glauca patchwood
Primarily, I would like to express my appreciation and thankfulness to my advisor Khaled Nassar for all his help and effort till reaching this point. Also, I would like to give thanks to the Lab engineer Ahmed and Haitham who helped me in preparing my samples. Worth appreciating, Mostafa Nassar, supplied us with all the needed wood for sample testing. In addition, I would like to give thanks to all AUC family who helped me throughout my process to be able to reach this phase. Last but not least, I cannot forget to give credits to my family and my wife for their endless support.
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to determine the strength of local casuarina glauca patchwood under artificial weathering presenting the changes of strength of wood along fibers. The study involved wood of similar density - half factorial design experiment was used with four factors to use fewer samples to have a total of 8. The specimens were exposed to artificial weathering consisting of soaking wood in water, drying at 60 °C, and exposure to UV radiation. Three-step aging cycle was repeated 8 times. In general, the tested wood species changed their compressive strength differently under the influence of artificial weathering. The process of artificial weathering caused a loss of strength of all tested wood species. The extent of changes depended on initial properties of wood (especially density) and anatomy. Two experiments were implemented; one with vertical patch-wood alignments and the other with horizontal patch-wood alignments. Since this research was conducted to determine the strength of block boards made from local casuarina glauca wood, the strength was determined in the longitudinal direction. it is conducted that the strength of block boards can carry a normal stress of (185.75 N/mm2) with 3 points bending test and in the vertical alignment. whilst with 4 points bending test, it can carry a normal stress of (158.55 N/mm2). The weakest can carry a normal stress of (60.31 N/mm2) while on 4 points bending test it can carry a normal stress of (52.60 n/mm2). It was determined that the presence of intermediate biscuit did not help in the strength but it weakens the wood but helps only after the cycling variable. Also, it was determined that PVAc is better the M.U.F. However, the horizontal alignment experiment recorded a shear force result of (3.54 N/mm2) in the 3 points-test and (2.5 N/m2) in the 4 points test while the weakest can carry a force of 0.94 for both tests.