Applying biomimicry in lightweight wood panel development

Lightweight in the wood-based construction and furniture industry is not a new topic. The density reduction using sandwich structure with light cores for doors or mobile homes was confirmed by users more than three decades ago. The engines for these developments are on the one hand the fast growing market of knockdown furniture and on the other hand the increasing costs for energy and raw materials. Additional factors that make weight saving a primary economical objective for most producers are transportation costs, easier handling and higher acceptance among the end users. Moreover, customers demand more for ergonomically solutions regarding packaging. Today many ways to attain a lighter wooden structure are on offer, some of them following partially in industrial application and only very few of them following the nature solution. The first one is the use of light-weight wood species limited by the availability, strengths, processability and so on. A second one is the sandwich structure made from hard faces like plywood, particleboard or high density fiberboard and cores made from honeycomb paper or foams like the polystyrene one. A third way to produce a light structure is to reduce the core weight drastically, using predesigned cavities or skeletons with special shapes and connections to the faces. In this last development the biomimetic can inspire and improve significantly the design and performances. Many patents were generated by researchers and developers for new one-stage production processes for multi-layered panels with coatings made from foils, impregnated papers, veneers, particles or fibres and a core consisting of solid wood with special designed cavities or embedded hard skeletons. These prototypes were partially integrated in existing industrial processes for wood based panels keeping some of the advantages of the biomimicry and of continuous production technique in matters of efficiency. Compared to sandwich structures with foam or honeycomb paper core some problems of those like the connection in half or final parts, resistance to water, moisture, temperature and fire, and maybe last but not least the recyclability were easy to solve.