Manufacture of laminated strips board from ivory Bamboo (bambusa vulgaris var. striata) / Muhammad Hanif Mazlan

The world market for bamboo is lucrative considering billions of USD worth of
commodity and bamboo-related products are being traded annually. The
increased global awareness and demand for bamboo as one of emerging
green products from sustainable resources has led to more usage of bamboo
in commercial applications. Realising the potential and importance of
bamboo, Malaysia has embarked on concerted efforts to elevate bamboo to
become a vital resource commodity. This study was conducted to determine
the basic, mechanical and physical properties of ivory bamboo (Bambusa
vulgaris var. striata) at different strip orientation and strip layer. The
mechanical properties of B. vulgaris var. striata were loaded in bending and
internal bonding while the physical properties were density, thickness,
swelling and water absorption. The bamboo specimens were selected from
bottom part and towards 8 metre up. The specimens were oven dried until
8% moisture content for board manufacture. The board were conditioned to
achieve 12% moisture content before tested. The boards were replicated by
4 for each parameter. The statistical analysis showed that there were
significantly different for number of board layers and board orientations
except for water absorption and thickness swelling at different layers. The
board properties indicated that the 3 layers board is stronger than 5 layers
board. Meanwhile, the parallel orientation board gave better performance as
compared to cross orientation. Therefore, it can concluded that the
manufacture laminated strip board was successfully because it has achieve
minimum requirement Malaysian Standard (MS 1787) for wood based panel
and it has comparable modulus of rupture for flooring accordance to
Malaysian Standard (MS 3.44: 1978).