Manufacturing of a sandwich structure engineered wood with a rice husk flake core and teak veneer reinforced with glass/carbon fiber skin

The manufacturing of a sandwich structure engineered wood, constructed from a rice husk flake core and teak veneer as outside skins, was studied in this work. Epoxy adhesive was employed, while glass and carbon fiber, both short discontinuous and woven forms, were used as reinforcement. The impact strength, flexural properties, and dimensional stability of the samples after prolonged water immersion were measured. At the assigned reinforcement loadings, the rice husk flake/woven woods showed mechanical superiority over the rice husk flake/short discontinuous materials, regardless of the fiber type. The reason for the greater rice husk flake/woven interfacial adhesion and laminated woven strength, compared to the rice husk flake/short discontinuous composite was investigated. The samples constructed from teak veneer laminated with woven glass or carbon fiber skin and rice husk flake or rice husk flake/30% woven glass cores had greater mechanical properties. The high shear and tensile/compression stresses of woven glass or carbon fiber laminated onto teak veneer skins were confirmed. The sandwich structure engineered wood using woven glass and carbon fiber reinforcement exhibited good dimensional stability under prolonged water immersion. Carbon fiber was the better material candidate compared to woven glass in terms of manufacturing the sandwich engineered wood presented in this work.