The objective of this study was to examine new attributes and conduct economic analyses for composite CLT (CCLT) and value-added appearance-based CLT products manufactured with varying substitution of softwood lumber with structural composite lumber (SCL) and hardwood lumber. Incentives for including such materials could be aesthetic, structural and economic.
Structural and aesthetic property assessments were carried out on prototype CLT panels. Multiple CLT panel configurations (17) were evaluated to assess the effects of including hardwood and SCL materials in the layups. Presence of hardwood in the panels’ configuration generally led to higher checking and density. Because of the higher shrinkage of hardwood, the bondline suffered from more delamination. A lower density hardwood (aspen) was included in some configurations and exhibited a greater direct compatibility with current Canadian manufacturing process. Changes to this process, such as selecting a hardwood specific adhesive may lead to improvements.