Relationship between bending performance and chip size of strand board made from reed

Abstract

In this article, we report the development of Reed Strand Board (RSB), which is a strand board made from reed. Recently, reed is little utilized with the decline of reed industries in Japan. The aim of this study is to develop a new effective use of reed. However, the reed in raw state has large variations in strength and dimensions. Therefore it is very difficult to use as a structural material despite having similar tensile strength to wood and bamboo. For the purpose of eliminating the variations of strength and dimensions of the material, a strand board is developed in which reeds are finely cut and chipped and hot pressed with an adhesive. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between the size of reed chip and the bending properties of the board.