Performance of stock kitchen cabinets and laboratory-produced cabinets based on joint tests

This study determined the deflections at different load levels and the load at failure for three purchased stock kitchen cabinets and nine laboratory-produced kitchen cabinets. The laboratory-produced cabinets were designed and constructed based on an earlier study which tested the effectiveness of different combinations of hot-melt adhesives and joint design. The laboratory-produced cabinets had back panels constructed from particleboard, plywood, and hardboard. A comparison of the deflection results of the purchased cabinets to the laboratory-produced cabinets indicated that laboratory-produced cabinets performed better than the purchased cabinets since they had lower deflections and higher failure loads. Based on the Wilcoxon Rank Sum test, there was no significant difference at the 0.05 confidence level between the purchased and laboratory-made cabinets at relatively low loads of up to 200 pounds for horizontal deflection and 400 pounds for vertical deflection. Significance differences occurred at higher loadings.