Paper number 298

AN OBJECT-ORIENTED FINITE ELEMENT PROCESSING MODEL FOR ORIENTED STRAND BOARD WOOD COMPOSITES

Pascal Hubert¹ and Chunping Dai¹

1Composites and Treated Wood Products, Forintek Canada Corp., 2665 East Mall, Vancouver, B.C., Canada, V6T 1W5. http://www.forintek.ca

Summary

In this work, a comprehensive 1-D object-oriented finite element processing model for oriented strand board (OSB) wood composites has been developed. The model consists of modules of heat and mass transfer, resin cure and wood compaction. Predicted transient temperature and internal steam pressure profiles for different mat initial moisture contents and densities are compared with measurements from instrumented mats. Furthermore, predicted vertical density profile is compared to results obtained from x-ray scans. In general, the model captures the trends observed in practice and therefore can be a valuable tool for the OSB producers to understand and improve manufacturing processes.

Keywords

wood composites, oriented strand board, process modelling, object-oriented, hot pressing, finite element.