Evaluation of physical and mechanical properties of medium density fiberboard (MDF) manufactured from brazilian industries.

Abstract

This research was developed to evaluate the quality of MDF manufactured by brazilian industries based on the results of physical and mechanical properties of the standard boards with 15 mm thickness. Four factories were selected and identified as A, B, C, and D. For the evaluation of the board properties, they were collected from the all factories three samples produced by pine wood, besides of sample produced by eucalipto wood to the factory D. The following board properties were evaluated: moisture content, density, density profile, water absorption and thickness swelling 2 and 24 hours, internal bond and static bending. The tests were carried out according to European Standard EN and the results were compared with the requirements of European Standard EN 622-5:2006. The boards manufactured from eucalipto wood showed lower average values of internal bond and higher water absorption in comparison to boards manufactured from pine wood. The average values of thickness swelling after 24 hours water soaking, MOE and MOR parallel static bending of the commercial MDF evaluated in this study attends to minimum requirements of EN 622-5:2006. The average values of internal bond were lower than in relation to the EN standard.