• Journal of the Korean Wood Science and Technology
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.3-16
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• 1974

One of the disadvantages of. wood and wood products is their hydroscopicity or dimensional instability. This is responsible for the loss of green volume of lumber as seasoning degrade. Dimensional stabilization is needed to substantially reduce seasoning defects and degrades and for increasing the serviceability of wood products. Recently, considerable world-wide attention has been drawn to the so-called Wood-Plastic Composites by irradiation-and heat-catalyst-polymerization methods and many research and developmental works have been reported. Wood-Plastic Composites are the new products having the superior mechanical and physical properties and the combinated characteristics of wood and plastic. The purpose of this experiment was to obtain the basic data for the improvement of wooden materials by manufacturing WPC. The species examined were Mulpurae-Namoo (Fraxinus, rhynchophylla), Sea-Namoo (Carpinus laxiflora), Cheungcheung-Namoo (Cornus controversa), Gorosae-Namoo (Acermono), Karae-Namoo(Juglans mandshurica) and Sanbud-Namoo (Prunus sargentii), used as blocks of type A ($3{\times}3{\times}40cm$) and type B ($5{\times}5{\times}60cm$), and were conditioned to about 10~11% moisture content before impregnation in materials humidity control room. Methyl methacrylate (MMA) as monomer and benzoyl peroxide (BPO) as initiator are used. The monomer containing BPO was impregnated into wood pieces in the vacuum system. After impregnation, the treated samples were polymerized with heat-catalyst methods. The immersed weights of monomer in woods are directly proportionated to the impregnation times. Monomer impregnation properties of Cheungcheung-Namoo, Mulpurae-Namoo and Seo-Namoo are relatively good, but in Karae-Namoo, it is very difficult to impregnate the monomer MMA. Fig. 3 shows the linear relation between polymer retentions in wood and polymerization times; that is, the polymer loadings are increasing with polymerization times. Furthermore species, moisture content, specific gravity and anatomical or conductible structure of wood, bulking solvents and monomers etc have effects on both of impregnation of monomer and polymer retention. Physical properties of treated materials are shown in table 3. Increasing rates of specific gravity are ranged 3 to 24% and volume swelling 3 to 10%. ASE is 20 to 46%, AE 14 to 50% and RWA 18 to 40%. Especially, the ASE in relation to absorption of liquid water increases approximately with increase of polymer content, although the bulking effect of the polymerization of monomer may also be influential. WPCs from Mulpurae-Namoo and Cheungcheung-Namoo have high dimensional stability, while its of Karae-Namoo and Seo-Namoo are-very low. Table 4 shows the mechanical properties of WPCs from 6 species. With its specific gravity and polymer loading increase, all mechanical properties are on the increase. Increasing rate of bending strength is 10 to 40%, compression strength 25 to 70%, ;impact bending absorbed energy 4 to 74% and tensile strength 18 to 56%. Mulpurae-Namoo and Cheungcheung-Namoo with high polymer content have considerable high increasing rate of strengths. But incase of Karae-Namoo with inferior monomer impregnation it is very low. Polymer retention in cell wall is 0.32 to 0.70%. Most of the polymer is accumulated in cell lumen. Effective. of polymer retention is 58.59% for Mulpurae-Namoo, 26.27% for Seo-Namoo, 47.98% for Cheungcheung-Namoo, 25.64% for Korosae-Namoo, 9.96% for Karae-Namoo and 25.84% for Sanbud-Namoo.