Manufacturing and Mechanical Testing of Casuarina Glauca Blockboards

Wood, or timber, is light, cheap, and easy to transport and work with. On the contrary, reinforced concrete is more expensive, heavy & difficult to transport and slower to build. Previous research has proven that relatively cheap Casuarina Glauca wood could have sufficiently high strength that makes it a strong candidate for structural usage. In the construction field in Egypt, most of the used wood is blockboard composed from imported wood. The importing of wood represents a significant segment and Egypt invests a lot of its money in this segment, thus a research such as this one would significantly help Egypt to save money in the import business. This research aims to produce and test Egyptian blockboard made from Casuarina Glauca wood farmed in Egypt. The blockboards were produced and tested for their mechanical properties and compared to their imported counterparts. Moreover, these blockboards proved to be of a sufficiently high strength. Based on the results, this engineered wood product could be a structurally sound alternative for structural usage.