Physical and mechanical properties of wood-wool cement panels manufactured using lesser known timber species for structural application / Zakiah Ahmad and Mohd Azrizal Fauzi

Cement block has been used in the construction of low-cost housing due to its bigger surface area when compared to brick which required less cement mortar and longer man-hours during construction of housing units. Nowadays cement block weight has been an issue in the construction industry. As the building become higher and enormous, the block weight will become a significant factor in the design and hence as the determinant for the economical factor in the construction cost. In order to overcome this issue, lightweight block has been developed by introducing the use of fiber at higher percentage in order to reduce the amount of cement and sand. The addition of fibre in the production of cement block or cement bonded particle board still does not solve the problem of the high weight to strength ratio. This is due to the size of the fiber which has very high aspect ratio and the function of the fiber is just to increase the mechanical properties and improve the toughness. Therefore this study explores the potential of using wood shaving from less known species in the manufacturing of cement block by adding higher percentage of wood shreds in order to obtain light weight cement block.