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Fatigue strength and design stress of oil palm wood for furniture application

This paper is the culmination of research projects into under-utilised wood types. Funded by the International Tropical Timber Organisation (Osaka, $150,000), tests were conducted on compositions of oil palm wood (OPW) and 'oil palm empty fruit bunches based particleboard' (OPEFBP). Both were flat and raw furniture materials, with potential as furniture components. Lab-based material surface and edge testing, over three months with 200 samples in the UK and Malaysia, examined how the vulnerable parts of material coped with everyday use levels in domestic and work environments.

Ioras led the testing in both countries, and related conclusions to the standards of the furniture manufacturing and design trades worldwide. Results demonstrated that post-fatigue materials performance decreased as levels of stress increased, so both materials could be applied as a furniture design material but the stresses on OPW and OPEFBP components must be limited to 40% of their respective 'Modulus of Rupture'. The study also revealed that OPW does perform to the same standard as solid Rubberwood in cyclic loading (when weight on the material is continually loaded) as would be required for contract furniture, while OPEFBP performed in a similar way to Rubberwood-based particleboard, which proved it to be a more reliable material source for furniture manufacture.

Results were published in the European Journal of Wood and Wood Products, which specialises in promoting the application of material research for design and production. The work was underpinned by earlier research (not returned in REF) that centred on oil palm particle board.