Manufacturing and characterisation of wood-veneer sandwich panels with flame-retardant composite cores

Composite sandwich structures have been used for both structural and non-structural applications for many decades. However, their fire-reaction properties have not yet been comprehensively reported. The current work deals with fabricating a fire-retardant sandwiched veneer composite where a flame retardant (FR) modified wool-polypropylene (PP) composite has been selected as the core between two wood veneers. The mechanical and fire-reaction properties of conventional plywood and solid FR wool-PP composites were compared to those of the aforementioned sandwich structure. The research output indicated superior fire-reaction properties of the sandwich structure compared to those of the normal plywood samples. Furthermore, the veneer composites demonstrated improved mechanical properties with respect to those of the FR wool-PP composite and the transversely loaded plywood samples.