Development of Ply-Lam Composed of Japanese Cypress Laminae and Korean Larch Plywood

In recent years, the use of cross laminated timber (CLT) has been evolving. In addition, CLT manufactured with various species such as Japanese cedar has been developed to utilize the local resources in each country. However most factories in Japan produce CLT by bonding the laminae in width direction for orthogonal layers, where grain of element is perpendicular to the grain of outer layer, and this process is considered to be one of the factors that reduce productivity. A new wood based material (hereinafter referred to as Ply-lam) using wooden panel such as plywood for the orthogonal layer was developed in order to improve productivity in CLT manufacturing and improve quality. Japanese cypress lamina was used for the parallel layer, where grain of element is parallel to the grain of outer layer, of CLT and Korean larch plywood was used for the orthogonal layer, in order to effectively use Korean larch and expand the utilization of Japanese cypress. The cross-sectional construction of the Ply-lam was 5-layers 5-plies, and the dimensions were 1000 mm (width) × 150 mm (depth) × 4000 mm (length). As a performance evaluation of the manufactured Ply-lam, strength tests such as out-of-plane bending, in-plane bending, out-of-plane shearing and in-plane shearing tests were carried out. As the result of this study, Ply-lam composed of Japanese cypress lamina panels and Korean larch plywood showed very higher out-of-plane bending strength compared to the standard strength of CLT. And the result obtained in other tests seems to show a sufficiently high value.