Chipboard, fiberboard, and particle board are engineered materials made by gluing wood chips or wood particles together with an adhesive under high pressure. Increased use of these materials has resulted in the need for more stringent testing to determine their strength properties. One of these tests is the tensile strength perpendicular to surface test, also known as the internal bond strength test, and is also commonly used as a fundamental measure of the adhesive performance in wood composites. This test method covers the determination of tensile strength properties of these boards or adhesive bonds in wood.
In principle, the test involves bonding specimen blocks to the top and bottom surfaces of the test specimen with a suitable adhesive. ASTM D1037, Standard Test Method for Evaluating Properties of Wood-Base Fiber and Particle Panel Materials, specifies that the upper loading fixture should be self-aligning, and the specimen blocks should be 2-inch square by 1-inch in thickness and made from steel or aluminum alloy. The loading fixtures, which grip the specimen blocks, are attached to the test machine and tension is applied perpendicular to specimen surface until the specimen fails. Tensile strength is then calculated by dividing the maximum load at failure by the cross-sectional area of the test specimen.
A suitable test set up for testing to these standards includes either a 3300 or 5500 Series electromechanical testing machine, configured with a suitable load cell and the internal bond fixture. Our internal bond fixture is designed in compliance with the test fixture specifications stated in the test standards.
Our Bluehill® Lite or Bluehill 2 tension application module contains many test set up parameters, providing user the flexibility to create test methods to meet a wide range of international test standards, and automatically calculate the desired results and produces a test report.