Abstract

The metalized wood composites with natural grain of imported Juglans nigra, which was impregnated with low melting alloy were manufactured and evaluated in this study. And the proper manufacturing conditions was also investigated in this study. The low melting alloy with bismuth (Bi) and tin (Sn) which are harmless to humans, was applied to this new composites. The composites showed not only no defects of discoloration, delamination, swelling, and cracking, because of high dimensional stability and low thickness swelling, but also much improved performance such as high bending strength, high hardness, abrasion resistance, high thermal conductivity as floor materials. This study also suggested the proper impregnating condition, such as 10 minutes of the preliminary vacuum time, $186^{\circ}C$ of the heating temperature and 10 minutes of the maintaining pressure time at the pressure of $30kgf/cm^2$. This metalized wood composites showed 7 times higher density than control, great increase in bending strength from $131.8N/mm^2$ to $192.3N/mm^2$, and great increase in hardness from $18.2N/mm^2$ to $90.4N/mm^2$. The composites demonstrated not only high emissivity of 91%, high shilding effectiveness of 92.59∼99.99%, high fire resistance but also great decrease in abrasion depth, water absorption and thickness swelling.

Keywords

• low melting alloy;
• wood composites;
• Juglans nigra;
• hardness;
• abrasion resistance