RESEARCH OF ROUGHNESS CRITERIA FOR ASSESSING THE EDGE QUALITY OF LVL BOARDS

Thirty-two edges of samples, issued from oak experimental LVL panels a nd boards, have been compared using three methods: a tactile test (the reference), measure with mechanical probe and measure with image anal ysis The results showed that the human being is more influenced by the anatomical roughness and the variation of veneer's grain angle than t he two objective methods. The improvement of the mechanical probe crit erion has shown that the number and the height of the picks have an ef fect on the human sensation. Image analysis and mechanical probe are s trongly correlated (R-2 = 0.88) and they are concerned with the depth of the valleys, i.e; the chips in this case. ((C) Inra/Elsevier, Paris ).