The flammability behavior of wood/plastic nanocomposites made from recycled polystyrene, wood flour, and nanoclay were investigated in this study. The wood flour was mixed, using the two weight ratios of 40 wt.% and 60 wt.% with recycled polystyrene, and nanoclay was added at 0 wt.% and 5 wt.%. A coupling agent was also added at up to 3 wt.% of the composite. The results showed that the oxygen index increased when higher contents of wood flour were added. Furthermore, it was found that the samples required more oxygen for ignition when the percentage of wood flour was increased. Similarly, it was found that the samples required a greater amount of oxygen for ignition with increasing nanoclay content. Therefore, the flammability of the sample decreased because the time to ignition took longer in the absence of sufficient oxygenation. X-ray analysis of the nanocomposites revealed that the morphological structure involved intercalation.

Recently, the use of nanoparticles in Wood Plastic Composites (WPCs) has been considered by researchers. In this study, Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotubes (MWCNTs) were compounded with PVC, wood-flour, and foaming agent in an internal mixer. The wood flour amount was constant at 40 phr. For CNT and chemical foaming agent , different levels of 0, 1, 2 phr and 0, 3, 6 phr were considered respectively. The samples were foamed via batch process using a compression molding machine at 180°C. Morphology, density, water absorption, thickness swelling, and tensile properties of foamed composites were evaluated as a function of CNT and chemical foaming agent contents. The experimental results indicated that in the presence of CNT, cell density increased and cell size decreased. Density of the foamed composites was not affected by chemical foaming agent contents. Water absorption and thickness swelling of samples were decreased as compared with wood plastic composite without CNTs. Also, the maximum tensile strength and modulus were increased by up to 20% and 23% respectively.

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The performance of the Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average )ARIMA) model and Double and Holt-winters exponential smoothing techniques for forecasting the consumption of particleboard in Iran are compared. Annual time series data from 1978 to 2009 in the modeling process, and observations from 2010 to 2012 were used to check the accuracy of the models' forecasting performance. Also, the models' performances were calculated in terms of RMSE criterion, and the consumption of particleboard in Iran was forecasted up to the year 2017 using the most appropriate model. The results of comparing different forecast models showed that the ARMA (2,1) model yielded the lowest RMSE value compared to the other two models, which makes it more appropriate for the prediction of consumption of particleboard in Iran. Results also revealed that there might be an increasing trend in the consumption of particleboard, i.e., an average annual increasing rate calculated as 5% for particleboard. Thus, it was predicted that the consumption of particleboard would increase from 901,652 m 3 in 2012 to 1,178,320 m 3 in 2017.

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