Recovering wood wastes for potential use in building

Abstract

Wood shavings which are waste products of the wood industries have been regrouped under the basis of their sizes in three classes. For every class, wood concretes prismatic samples of 4x4x16 cm3 dimensions have been prepared from the mixture of Bubinga wood shavings and Portland cement. Their physical (densities, water absorption rate) and mechanical (flexural and unconfined compressive strength) characteristics have been studied during 8 years. The results we obtained tend to show that the mechanical and physical characteristics of wood concrete are stable and depend: on the wood shavings class and the quantity of cement that have been used for their manufacture. The main result of this survey is that: the wood concrete so made can be used to produce chipboards for walls and insulations materials.