Technology for Wood and Natural Fiber-Based Materials

Technical Equipment

The Fraunhofer WKI offers extensive technical equipment for research and development. For the work in our department we mainly use the following equipment.

Production and testing of wood- and natural fiber-reinforced composite materials

  • Chipping units
  • Various flakers (shavings, strands)
  • Various mills
  • Sieves and separators
  • Veneer peeling line (maximum veneer width 1600 mm)
  • Chamber for the steaming and boiling of timber logs
  • 12" refiner for fiber production, incl. blow-line gluing and flashtube dryer
  • Blender-gluing for adhesive application
  • Drying cabinets for bulk material
  • Mixers
  • Various hot presses (max. 1200 mm x 1600 mm)
  • Molding press tools
  • Extruder
  • Diverse extrusion tools
  • Compounding extruder
  • Under-water and air granulation
  • Palltruder®
  • Mini injection-molding machine
  • Measuring mixer
  • Testing devices (e.g. raw density profile measuring system)

Processing of WPC

  • Diverse facilities for the processing and modification of wood and synthetic polymers (refiner facility, mills, flakers, separators, sieves)
  • Compounding of WPC with under-water or air granulation
  • Gravimetric dosage system for different material flow capabilities
  • Measuring mixers and mini injection-molding system (tools for bending, tensile and impact strength tests as well as dynamic-mechanical analysis)
  • Hot presses for the production of WPC boards

Testing and analysis of WPC

  • Determination of the mechanical and physical properties of WPC in accordance with the relevant series of standards EN 15534 (2014)
  • Single-screw extruder for rheological investigations
  • Xenon and QUV accelerated-weathering devices, outdoor weathering
  • Particle measurement (»FibreShape«, vibration and air jet sieve)
  • Various light microscopes, electron microscopy with EDX, ATR-FTIR, FTIR microscope
  • Thermal analysis (DMA, DSC, TGA, TGA-FTIR)
  • Leaching and emissions from WPC

Measurement and system technology

  • Computer tomograph Procon X-Ray CT-AlphaDuo for the imaging of samples up to 500 mm in diameter incl. in situ CT for e.g. 4-point bending test
  • Particle size measurement system FiberShape
  • Field Asymmetric Ion Mobility Spectrometer (FAIMS) for the detection of org. wood preservatives
  • Near-infrared sorting facility for particles up to a grain size of 50 mm
  • Facility for rotor blade testing on the ground and with platform technology
  • Various compact and high-resolution thermographic cameras (incl. microbolometer cameras, dual-band camera) for laboratory and industrial application
  • Optical measuring system for contact-free topography measurement with transport mechanism
  • Fringe projection system for contact-free topography measurement
  • NIR spectral imaging system for wavelengths of up to 2100 nm