Abstract
Plywoods used for construction as a decorative interior material are inflammable and can make fire accidents, causing destruction of human life and property. Therefore, it is indeed required to make fire-retardant treated plywood. In this study, 3.7mm yellow meranti plywoods were soaked in 18% boric acid solutions and tap water by hot-cold bath for 1/2, 2/2, 4/2, 6/2 hours and redrying of treated plywoods was carried out by press drying at the platen temperature of 110, 130, 160, $180^{\circ}C$ and then it was conducted to investigate solution absorption, drying rates, dynamic young's modulus. specific gravity and fire-retardant factors such as burning point, flame spread length. flame exhausted time, back side carbonized area and weight loss by treating time, treating solutions and platen temperature. The results are as follows; 1. When plywood was impregnated with the hot bath temperature of $70^{\circ}C$ for 1. 2, 4, 6 hours and the cold bath temperature of $15^{\circ}C$ for 2 hours respectively, retentions of boric acid were 1.565, l.597, 1.643, 1.709kg/$(30cm)^3$ and all of them exceeded the minimum retention [1.125kg/$(30cm)^3$] even in the shortest treatment. 2. In hot-cold bath method for 1/2 hours, the drying rates of treated plywood remarkably increased with the extension of platen temperature of 110, 130, 160, $180^{\circ}C$ and the values of boric acid treated plywood were 5.900, 10.196, 45.42, 54.958m.c%/min and the values of water treated plywood were 6.014, 12.373, 46.520, 55.730m.c%/min and drying rates of water treated plywood were faster than those of boric acid treated plywood. 3. The values of boric acid treated plywoods in dynamic young's modulus were widely higher than those of water treated plywoods. And it can be observed that there were highly significant differences for treating time between dynamic young's modulus, and the values of boric acid plywoods increased with the extension of treating time but on the contrary water treated plywoods were decreased values with prolonged time 4. It was observed that there were highly significant differences for platen temperature between dynamic young's modulus. When the values of water treated plywoods in dyna nic young's modulus were abruptly decreased according to the rise of platen temperature. boric acid treated plywoods showed rather increased values at $160^{\circ}C$ of platen temperature. And in 2- way interactions, there were also highly significant for dynamic young's modulus between treating time x treating solutions and platen temperature x treating solutions. 5. Correlation coefficients of fire-retardant factors were shown in table 5. It could be recognized that there were close correlations between the treating solutions and burning point, flame spread length, back side carbonized area, flame exhausted time and weight loss, but there was no correlation between fire-retardant factors and treating time and platen temperature. 6. From table 6, it can be observed that there were highly significant differences for burning point, flame spread length, flame exhausted time, back side carbonized area, weight loss between treating solutions. And in 2-way interactions, there were highly significant for burning point, flame spread length, weight loss between treating time $\times$ treating solutions.