Thermal and acoustic characteristics of innovative foam core particleboards

Innovative foam core particleboards have potential to be used for the thermal and sound insulation applications. The insulation properties of novel foam core particleboards (19 mm) produced with various production process parameters were analyzed in this study. It was revealed that both surface layer thickness of panels and press temperature were the two major parameters influencing the thermal properties of novel foam core particleboards. The lower the surface layer thickness, the better the thermal insulation. A higher thermal resistance was also obtained for panels produced with higher press temperature (160 degrees C), due to their better structure for thermal resistance (less compaction of surface layers and higher foam cell density). Sound insulation characteristics of foam core particleboards revealed that the sound transmission loss (TL) and sound transmission class (TC) were enhanced by increasing the surface layer thickness from 3 to 5 mm. Changing press temperature, pressing and foaming times had no influence on the sound TL and TC. In general, the foam core panels having lower density (30-50% lower) than those of conventional panels showed promising thermal and sound insulation properties, while still, further modifications would be necessary.