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PEER-REVIEWED BRIEF COMMUNICATION
The OSB market is growing worldwide, with an expected growth of 28% until 2022 (Grand View Research 2015). This increasing consumption in different sectors (mainly construction, furniture, and packing) is related to improved panel properties such as strength, workability, and versatility (Grand View Research 2015). Moreover, the growing substitution of OSB for plywood is expected to continue due to factors such as reduced availability of good quality logs for lamination, making the OSB an advantageous option, as it can be produced from lower quality logs and low commercial value species (Mendes 2013). In Brazil the OSB is predominantly manufactured with Pinus sp. wood species ( Pinus elliotti and Pinus taeda ). However, with the growing demand for this product and the fact that Pinus species are widely used for various other purposes such as manufacture of plywood boards, cellulose industry, and sawmills (Vidal and Hora 2014), the amount of wood stored may not be enough to supply the market. Other species need to be studied for their use in these products. There have been some studies of the viability of OSB production with other species found in Brazil such as Croton sonderianus Muell. Arg, Piptadenia stipulacea, Croton sonderianus Muell. Arg (Nascimento et al. 2015), Schizolobium amazonicum (Ferro 2015), Eucalyptus grandis , and Eucalyptus dunnii (Iwakiri et al. 2004). The common properties investigated in studies about OSB performance are bending strength, modulus of elasticity in bending in major and minor axis, internal bond, and thickness swelling after 24 h of immersion in water, as defined by the EN 300 (2006) standard. Bertolini (2014), Bertolini et al. (2014), and Varanda (2016) examined the structural porosity of particleboards. Jin et al. (2021) analyzed the porosity of wood species. The presence of pores may influence the mechanical properties, dimensional stability, thermal conductivity, permeability, and acoustical properties of particleboards. The determination of pore size through mercury intrusion porosimetry (MIP) involves the forced intrusion of mercury into the pores and the measurement of the amount of liquid spent in the procedure (Zhao et al. 2021). According to Varanda (2014), this technique can be used to determine several important parameters in the characterization of porous materials, including total intrusion volume, total pore area, average pore diameter, real and apparent density, and porosity of the sample. Because OSB is used for structural applications, the porosity must be included in the performance evaluation of these materials. The present study evaluated the porosity and pore distribution in different types of OSB manufactured in Brazil using mercury intrusion porosimetry.
EXPERIMENTAL Materials
This study used five OSBs made with different wood species, resin type, and resin content. Four of them were produced in the Wood and Timber Structures Laboratory (LaMEM), Department of Structures Engineering (SET), São Carlos Engineering School (EESC), São Paulo University (USP), using wood species particles such as Schizolobium amazonicum sp., Pinus sp., and Corymbia citriodora , which were bonded with castor oil- based polyurethane. The other OSB analyzed in this study was found in the Brazilian market, manufactured by Louisiana Pacific Corporation (LP Brazil) with Pinus sp. wood and phenol-formaldehyde resin. For OSB manufactured, wooden beams were sectioned into pieces approximately 90 mm wide and 35 mm thick, which defined the length and
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Ferro et al . (20 21). “Strandboard Hg porosimetry,” B io R esources 16(4), 6661-6668.
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