Janka Hardness Evaluation of Plantation-Grown <i>Eucalyptus nitens</i> for Engineered Flooring Applications

oleh: Kuluni Millaniyage, Nathan Kotlarewski, Louise Wallis, Assaad Taoum, Gregory Nolan

Format: Article
Diterbitkan: MDPI AG 2022-11-01

Deskripsi

Hardness is commonly used to determine the suitability of a timber species for flooring applications. In this study, Janka hardness test is conducted on sawlog managed <i>Eucalyptus nitens</i> and regrowth forest <i>Eucalyptus obliqua</i> sourced from Tasmania, Australia. Plantation <i>E. nitens</i> timber is currently entering the Australian market and the feasibility of using this fast grown species in value added applications such as timber flooring is advantageous. Further to testing Janka hardness on solid timber samples, a regime of engineered timber flooring prototypes consisting of plantation <i>E. nitens</i> top layers, veneers and solid densified <i>E. nitens</i> boards were developed and subjected to Janka hardness test. The results were compared against solid <i>E. obliqua</i> flooring and a commercially available engineered flooring product with Tasmanian Oak top layer. The results showed that Janka hardness of plantation grown <i>E. nitens</i>, and <i>E. obliqua</i> currently available in the market are lower than the values published in the literature. This indicates that the material properties of fast grown plantation timber and regrowth forest material are different to the native forest timber properties published decades earlier. Furthermore, some of the tested engineered flooring prototypes showed similar behaviour to timber flooring products currently in market, suggesting that <i>E. nitens</i> engineered flooring would be suitable for domestic/light commercial flooring applications despite the general conception of unsuitability due to lower densities.