Determining strength of wood fiberboard

In the manufacture of wood-fiber insulation board where the board is pressed to a uniform thickness and the pressed board is continuously advanced in a horizontal travel direction on a conveyor prior to subdivision into individual panels, an apparatus for determining the strength of the wood-fiber insulation board, the apparatus comprising:

• a vertically shiftable contact element;
• actuator means for pressing the contact element downward at an actual pressure on a subregion of the advancing wood-fiber insulation board so as produce an actual deformation of the wood-fiber insulation board of between 1% to 7% of its thickness;
• a force sensor for determining the actual pressure applied by the contact element to the board that produces the actual deformation;
• a central processor;
• and
• means for transmitting the determined pressure and the actual deformation to the central processor, the central processor extrapolating to a standardized deformation based on the determined pressure and the actual deformation.