Abstract
The research has conducted to investigate the possibility of corn cobs utilization in particleboards production . Forty two boards were manufactured within two experiments . At the first one 18 boards produced to test the effect of two factors ; particle size ( 3 levels ) , and resin content ( 2 levels ) on the board properties . The results of this experiment affirmed the superiority of the smallest size of particles . The second one dealt with the influence of three factors ; board layering , resin content , and board density . Half of 24 boards of this stage were manufactured by using wood particles as board surfaces to the corn cobs core . Testing results showed that 3 – layer board were more better than single layer one in all of mechanical and physical properties . This difference was at its higher level in case of high density boards. In spite of the significant improvement occurred with increasing resin content from 6% to 8% the first one seemed to be sufficient especially with 3 layers high density boards. Hence, the introducing of wood in a 3 : 7 ratio with corn cobs resulted in a very high improvement that should not neglected when trying in the utilization of this raw material.
