| dc.description.abstract | Coconut wood or Cocowood has a long history of being utilized as a building
material in Sri Lanka. Cocowood stem has three major parts from the inner core
to outer skin such as; low-density wood, medium density wood and high-density
wood based on the moisture content and the fibre bundle patterns. Cocowood is
mainly used for roof construction and the utilizations are limited for certain
lengths where timber logs less than 4’-0” in length are mostly abandoned in
factory processes in Sri Lanka. The high-density stem fibre has properties
similar to many hardwood timbers which are majorly used for luxury flooring
products while the rest of the stems are under-utilized or used as firewood. Even
though the utilization of Cocowood for flooring is practised in the international
context, it has not been properly adopted in the local context. The objective of
this research is to produce an affordable engineering flooring material that
minimizes the material wastage of Cocowood by utilizing the medium density
Cocowood stem and abandoned short length hard-density Cocowood logs. The
research process identified the efficient use of Cocowood and the practical
dimensions for an affordable Cocowood flooring material. Experiments resulted
in 0’-6”x 0’-48” sized, ¾” thick, glue-lamed, aesthetically pleasing, engineered
Cocowood tile that can be utilized as an alternative economic flooring material.
The introduced tile is economical compared to the other timber flooring
materials available in the current market. | en_US |
