Bending Creep Performance of Wood Flooring Composited with Cork Composite Boards Reinforced with Metal, Glass Fiber, and Carbon Fiber Using Temperate and Tropical Wood Species

Abstract

This study investigated the bending creep performance of cork composite wood floorings. The cork composite wood floorings consisted of two temperate species (tulip tree and larch) and two tropical species (teak and merbau) as the face layer, and a cork board reinforced with metal, glass fiber, or carbon fiber as the core layer. The bending creep curves for all specimens showed a shape to increase at the upper right side, and the curves were found to show a linear behavior beyond about 1 h. The initial compliances of cork composite wood floorings increased in the order of merbau (M) < teak (T) = larch (La) < tulip tree (Tu), which showed a density dependence where higher density species that had lower deformation. The creep compliance increased in the order of tulip tree < merbau < teak < larch, but the values of this increase remained small. Regarding the dissimilar materials, the creep compliance tended to increase in the order of CM (cork-metal) < CC (cork-carbon fiber) < CG (cork-glass fiber). From these results, the bending creep compliance of the cork composite wood flooring with temperate wood species was higher than for those with high-density tropical wood species, but the gap between those species was small. These results indicate the potential of temperate wood species for various interior applications.