Mechanical behaviour of phenolic coated Finnish birch plywood with simulated service damage

This paper investigates the mechanical behaviour of Finnish birch ($\textit{Betula pendula}$ and $\textit{Betula pubescens}$) plywood commonly used in road freight trailer decking. A series of tests have been performed to characterize the mechanical performance of the material and the effect of in-service damage that is likely to occur when the material is used in this application. Moisture damage, indentation damage, and abrasive wear are all recreated in the laboratory and the severity of each is assessed. In particular, the effect of indentation damage on flexural properties is compared against the effect of moisture damage. It is found that while indentation damage can often appear more severe during a visual inspection, it generally has a lesser effect on flexural stiffness and strength compared to moisture damage. While the effect of moisture damage on flexural properties is well documented, the effect of indentation damage is previously less well understood. Both indentation damage and moisture damage significantly increase variance in flexural stiffness, but not flexural strength. This work provides a practical insight into whether damaged road freight trailer decking can still withstand in-service loadings. It also provides a benchmark for the performance of novel deck systems such as composite sandwich panels and glass-fibre pultrusions.Centre for Sustainable Road Freight; Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council [Grant ID: EP/K00915X/1

FBC2003-074 FIRESIDE DEPOSIT FORMATION IN BIOMASS FIRED FBC: A COMPARISON BETWEEN TESTS PERFORMED IN THREE SIGNIFICANTLY DIFFERENT SIZED COMBUSTORS

ABSTRACT This paper deals with the prediction of ash related problems in fluidized bed boilers during co-firing of various bio-fuels. A study was performed where the slagging and fouling behavior was monitored in three different sized bubbling fluidized bed combustors, a 20 kW semi-pilot reactor, a 2 MW pilot-scale device and a 105 MW full-scale boiler. The aim of the study was to learn about how well slagging and fouling in a small-scale device compares to a full-scale boiler and to see how well the slagging and fouling can be predicted with a small-scale device. Various types of Scandinavian bio-fuels as well as peat were used both separately and mixed. From all three devices ash and deposit samples were collected during as uniform and stable conditions as possible. The fuels used in the three devices during the test campaigns were carefully chosen so that they would be as similar as possible. Bed, furnace and flue gas temperatures were monitored as well as flue gas emissions. The fuels, ashes and deposits were analyzed on their main components and deposition rates were calculated based on the deposit measurements. These data were finally used for assessing the slagging and fouling propensity of the fired fuel. The paper compares and discusses the results from the three different size classes. INTRODUCTION Ash related problems such as slagging and fouling of heat exchanger surfaces and de-fluidization of the bed in fluidized bed firing systems continue to challenge the operators and designers. The problem has during the last 10 years received increased attention and substantial research efforts have been put into the area to both solve the problem as well as to predict it. Still, however, the problem remains, partly due to lack of basic knowledge about ash behavior in FBC systems, partly also due to the fact that new and more problematic fuels are introduced to the system. In many FBC applications also co-firing is used, and the traditional ash behavior prediction methods such as standard melting temperatures and ash composition based indexes were simply not designed to be able to predict co-firing cases. In this paper we present results from a study where we wanted to test how well ash behavior could be predicted in a small-scale rig compared to a full-scale FBC boiler /1/