A new wood-based lightweight composite for boatbuilding

Wood-based lightweight composites are widely used and appreciated in marine craft, being suitable for meeting the requirements of such a high-challenging application, due to their high strength to density ratio. While marine plywood represents a consolidated product for skins formation, the research is today focused on new high-performing composites with special cores.In this context, the paper reports the development and testing of an innovative wood-based composite. This is in the form of a sandwich panel made of okoum\' (Aucoumea klaineana Pierre) plywood skins bonded to an innovative honeycomb core constituted by lozenge-shaped, okoum\' plywood cells. A physical-mechanical characterization was performed, aimed to obtain an overview of the performances achieved by the panel; moreover, a preliminary investigation of the sound absorption properties was carried out. On the whole the results promote further developments, in particular regarding the optimization of the sound absorption properties in the low frequency range.