The aim of the work was the investigation of the bond strength of various edging materials glued with four different hotmelts to the flat edge of a particleboard. Further interest was to establish the most suitable methods for assessment of the strength of the bond between the edging material and the particleboard. The investigation has been motivated by the earlier work of the authors and of the other researchers. In that work the combination of the boards and edging mate-rials, as well as the gluing procedure, did not represent the ideal model of the edge bond. The experiment has been performed on the non-veneered, 18 mm thick particleboard with the application of following edging materials:
PVC strip, 3 mm thick paper strip, 0.6 mm thick
HPL laminate (strip), 0.9 mm thick solid beech (lath), 12 mm thick
Those materials were edge-bonded using hotmelts on various bases:
- ethylene/vinyl acetate copolimer (EVA)
- polyamide (PA)
- polyolephine (PO)
- polyurethane (PU).
Three types of testing samples had been examined, and the most suitable sample type proved to be sample "C" (Fig. I). The strongest bonds with all materials have been achieved with PU adhesive. The analysis of the bonds with various edging materials at low temperatures revealed the bonds with PVC strip as the poorest, those with HPL strips as mediocre, and the bonds with paper and solid beech as the strongest. At medium and high temperatures the type of adhesive influences the bond strength to a greater extent than the edging material. The observation during investigation led to the conclusion that the experimentally induced stresses should simulate the actual stresses in use more closely.
