A typical plywood panel has face veneers of a higher grade than the core veneers. The principal function of the core layers is to increase the separation between the outer layerswhere the bending stresses are highest, thus increasing the panel's resistance to bending. As aresult, thicker panels can span greater distances under the same loads. In bending, themaximum stress occurs in the outermost layers, one in tension, and the other in compression.Bending stress decreases from the maximum at the face layers to nearly zero at the centrallayer. Shear stress, by contrast, is higher in the centre of the panel, and zero at the outerfibres

There are four groupings of plywood products, with each group designed for specificapplications:

• Structural
• Exterior
• Interior
• Marine

BENEFITS OF PLYWOOD

Plywood offers the following benefits:

Increased stability
Plywood offers all the inherent advantages of the parent wood plus enhanced properties in its laminated structure. ii.

High impact resistance
Being a wood based material, plywood has the ability to accommodate theoccasional short-term overload; up to twice the design load. This is useful whereseismic activity or cyclonic winds can occur. This property is also effective whenused as construction flooring or as concrete formwork. Plywood's laminatedstructure distributes loads from impact over a larger area on the opposite face,which effectively reduces the tensile stress.