Experimental study on tensile and compressive strength of bamboo scrimber

Abstract

The objective of this study was to provide fundamental parameters for the utilization of bamboo scrimber in the building structure field as a green building material. Both static tensile and compressive tests were conducted on bamboo scrimber, with 180 specimens for compressive tests and 173 specimens for tensile tests. The normal and lognormal distributions were selected to fit the experimental data. The design values were calculated according to the Chinese allowable stress design method and ASTM D2915 (2003). The results showed that both tensile strength (UTS) and compressive strength (CS) parallel to the fiber of bamboo scrimber were significantly higher than those of wood and other bamboo-based composite materials. Kolmogorov-Smirnov and chi-squared test results indicated that a lognormal distribution was a good fit for the UTS and CS except for the fitting result of UTS by the chi-squared test. The calculated design values of UTS and CS using ASTM D2915 (2003) were higher compared with those found using the Chinese allowable stress design method.