Forest Products Laboratory

Title: Wood composites

Author: Berglund, Lars; Rowell, Roger M.

Date: 2005

Source: Handbook of wood chemistry and wood composites. Boca Raton, Fla. : CRC Press, 2005: pages 279-301.

Description: A composite can be defined as two or more elements held together by a matrix. By this definition, what we call “solid wood” is a composite. Solid wood is a three-dimensional composite composed of cellulose, hemicelluloses and lignin (with smaller amounts of inorganics and extractives), held together by a lignin matrix. The advantages of developing wood composites are (1) to use smaller trees, (2) to use waste wood from other processing, (3) to remove defects, (4) to create more uniform components, (5) to develop composites that are stronger than the original solid wood, and (6) to be able to make composites of different shapes.

Keywords: Composite materials, engineered wood, waferboard, hardboard, fiberboard, adhesives, particle board, plywood, laminated wood, nanocomposites, glulam timbers, strandboard, composite wood

View and Print this Publication (534 KB)

Publication Notes: 

• We recommend that you also print this page and attach it to the printout of the article, to retain the full citation information.
• This article was written and prepared by U.S. Government employees on official time, and is therefore in the public domain.

 Get the latest version of the Adobe Acrobat reader or Acrobat Reader for Windows with Search and Accessibility

Citation

Berglund, Lars; Rowell, Roger M.  2005.  Wood composites.   Handbook of wood chemistry and wood composites. Boca Raton, Fla. : CRC Press, 2005: pages 279-301..