LIGNOCELLULOSIC COMPOSITES FROM BRAZILIAN GIANT BAMBOO (Guadua magna) PART 1: PROPERTIES OF RESIN BONDED PARTICLE BOARDS

This experiment evaluated the utilization of the recently identified Brazilian giant bamboo, Guadua magna (Londono & Filg.) to manufacture medium density particleboard. Four board types were tested: two of them exclusively with particles of bamboo and two in a mixture of bamboo with Pinus taeda wood particles. The target density of the panels was 0.65 g/cm(3) for all treatments. The particleboards were bonded using 8% content of urea-formaldehyde (UF) and phenol-formaldehyde (PF) resins, based on dry weight mat. Mechanical, physical and nondestructive properties of the panels were assessed. The particleboards produced with PF showed better dimensional stability than UF particleboards. The addition of wood particles improved the mechanical properties of E-M, f(M) and IB. The flexural properties of the panels (E-M, f(M)) could be modeled using either E-Md or density and the models fitted presented high predictability (> 66%).