Glued laminated timber and laminated veneer lumber structural products manufactured from Australian southern blue gum grown for woodchips

Abstract

Demand for wood products is growing internationally, and new initiatives are necessary to sustainably meet this demand. This paper presents such an initiative investigating the possibility of manufacturing glued laminated timber (GLT) and laminated veneer lumber (LVL) structural products from Australian southern blue gum (Eucalyptus globulus) plantation logs traditionally grown for woodchip purposes. 120 logs were harvested from two different plantations (15-year-old and 19-year-old) and processed at the Salisbury Research Facility into rotary peeled veneers (80 logs) and sawn boards (40 logs). The modulus of elasticity and visual grade distributions of the recovered veneers were assessed, as well as the compressive, tensile, shear, and bending strengths, density and modulus of elasticity of 240 sawn boards. The collected data were then used to assess the product grades which could be manufactured from the resources using different construction scenarios. GLT and LVL were finally manufactured and experimentally tested to confirm the potential of the resources in the production of suitable engineered wood products. This conference paper focusses on presenting the key data on the raw material, specifically the modulus of elasticity distribution of the veneers, and the tensile and compressive strengths of the sawn boards. The results from selected manufactured GLT and LVL are also presented and discussed.