Development of bonding strength of modified birch veneers during adhesive curing

This study investigated the bonding strength development of furfurylated, N-methylol melamine (NMM) modified and thermally treated birch veneers glued with hot curing phenol formaldehyde (PF) adhesive in different pressing (20, 160 s) and open assembly times (20 s, 10 min). For testing, the automated bonding evaluation system ABES was used with 2 N.mm-2 applied pressure at 130°C. The bonding strength of both modified and unmodified samples increased significantly by prolongation of the pressing time from 20 to 160 s in all cases and for both open assembly times. A deviation was observed for the samples treated at 220°C and at 20 s open assembly time. With the exception of NMM modified veneers, bonding strength did not change significantly by increasing the assembly time in the case of 20 s pressing for both modified and unmodified samples. At 160 s pressing time, extension of the assembly time developed a better bonding for controls, NMM modified and thermally treated veneers at 180°C. The combination of 10 min assembly time and 160 s pressing time proved as the optimal bonding condition for controls, NMM modified and thermally treated veneers at 180°C while the highest bonding strength was noted in 20 assembly time and 160 s pressing time for furfurylated veneers. In most of the cases modification affected negatively the bonding performance of the veneers, in particular for furfurylated and NMM modified samples.

Modeling and comparison of bonding strength of impregnated wood material by using different methods: Artificial neural network and multiple linear regression

In this study, the effects of vacuum time, diffusion time and pressing time on the bonding strength of Larix decidua wood impregnated with Immersol-Aqua and bonded with Klebit-303 were investigated. The vacuum time, diffusion time, and pressing time were predicted by using the artificial neural network (ANN) model and multiple linear regression (MLR) methods and the results of ANN and MLR methods were compared. The highest bonding strength (7.664 N. mm-2) was achieved when the vacuum time, the diffusion time and the pressing time were 20, 60 and 60 minutes, respectively, while the lowest value (4.62 N. mm-2) was achieved when the vacuum time, the diffusion time and the pressing time were 80, 120 and 20 minutes, respectively. The model results are as follows: The MAPE value for testing phase in the ANN was 7.266 and R2 value was 0.751 whereas the MAPE value of the MLR was 9.365 and R2 value was 0.558. The ANN model has been found to have better prediction performance than the MLR model.