Abstract:In this paper, the finite element method (FEM) is used to analyse the strengfh of case furniture. The case body is made of particleboard and the back is made of plywood or fiberboard. These boards belong to viscoelastic behaviour materials, but they can be considered as linear elastic behaviour materials within a certain area and dispersed and analysed by elastic plate elements. The corner joint of case furniture is a key problem during the calculation by FEM the small elements which located near corner joints are assumed to be semi-rigid elements. Then the fabricated modulus of elasticity of the semi-rigid elements are determined by individual corner joint experiments.In this experiment, four kinds of particleboard and two kinds of corner jiont forms were ussd to make up eleven cases. The displacement of some typical points under each load was measured by the Fturniture strength Test Mechine. After comparing the displacements of measurements with that of calculations, it was found that the errors were usually below 30%. Results of this study indicated that the deflection of case furniture could be calculated by using FEM, and proved that the program could be used for predicting case furniture deflection reliably.